Williams has announced a major appointment to its technical division by luring Pat Fry from Alpine to become its chief technical officer.
The team has been without a technical director since the departure of FX Demaison along with previous team principal Jost Capito during the off-season.James Vowles arrived from Mercedes to take over the running of the team in February. He began overhauling the team’s technical department, telling RaceFans in June he was “very clear in my mind what that looks like now.” Vowles confirmed Fry’s appointment in an interview on Sky.
Fry brings experience of working at half the current grid in a technical capacity over his career. Having worked at Benetton he spent a long spell at McLaren between 1993 and 2010, rising to the role of chief engineer.
From there he moved to Ferrari as assistant technical director and later became engineering director. He moved to Manor in 2014, then spent a while out of F1 when that team collapsed at the end of 2016.
Fry returned to McLaren in 2018 and later went back to another of his former teams, Renault – formerly Benetton – which became Alpine.
This article will be updated
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Nick T.
28th July 2023, 13:46
That’s a big get. It’s also yet another example of a big name running from Alpine/Renault (drivers and engineers), which supports the theory something is rotten at Enstone.
MichaelN
28th July 2023, 14:50
Is it, though? Of all the teams he’s been with in an influential position, the 2005 McLaren and 2012 Ferrari come the closest to being properly described as competitive. It’s obviously not fair or correct to put all that on him, but at the same time, the number of really successful projects in over 20 years of F1 is pretty small.
melanos
28th July 2023, 22:39
Not sure about the 2012 Ferrari, it only came close to winning the championship thanks to a stonking driving season from Fred, the car itself was a dog to drive.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
28th July 2023, 23:59
Agree, however the 2005 mclaren was a rocket, unfortunately unreliable, comparatively to the field it was the fastest car mclaren brought since early 1998 and probably until 2012, I wasn’t watching in the vettel era but heard the car was very fast and unreliable, again.