MAY 28, 2003

His goes to Maserati

Jean-Jacques His, the Renault engine designer, has gone back to Italy to work for Ferrari's sister company Maserati, working on road car engine design. His left Renault recently after falling out with the company's racing boss Flavio Briatore over the direction in which the F1 program is developing with Briatore having decided to abandon the development of the wide-angled V10 engine which Renault has pioneered in recent years.

Life is not easy for Briatore at the moment as Toyota has made a huge bid for Renault technical director Mike Gascoyne and with no prospect of an immediately competitive engine in 2004 and 2005 Renault may end up losing not only Gascoyne but also other leading members of his design team. They are almost all in the third year of their five year contracts with Renault and despite having designed a very good car have been let down for the last two seasons by the engines.

Ironically, the best chance that Renault has to win this year is at Monaco...