More on movements at McLaren

Well, having talked about Adrian Newey's move from McLaren to Red Bull in a recent post, its time now to talk about what is going to happen to McLaren, now that the guru is gone. And ofcourse, to the avid McLaren fan, the rumors of Nicholas Tombazis too moving from McLaren would have set-off the alarm bells. But ofcourse, it was just a rumor and the former Ferrari chief-aerodynamist is still with McLaren, having played a major role in the design of the award winning MP4-20 and being the driving force behind MP4-21.

Now, to talk of the void that Adrian would leave at McLaren, it was confirmed by Ron Dennis, McLaren team principal, a couple of weeks back that Adrian would not be replaced. And that is eye-brow raising stuff in itself. But perhaps Ron played a careful move in promoting the brilliant Tombazis as Vehicle Director, making him the chief-designer in effect. Perhaps a more subtle way of showing Newey the door? A mutual agreement, considering McLaren's track record of fighting ferociously when in danger of losing an engineer?

With Mike Coughlan heading the design team, Neal Oatley building up the engineering base and Paddy Lowe taking care of aerodynamics and simulation and a Tombazis to overlook all of them, McLaren, in my view, have not lost much.

And ofcourse, Red Bull has a lot to gain from Adrian, although I do not see that reflecting until 2007 when Newey gets to design a brand new car.