FEBRUARY 17, 2006

McLaren nabs Red Bull man

McLaren has hit back at Red Bull Racing by hiring the team's chief designer Rob Taylor. This is not a surprise as Taylor worked with McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan at John Barnard's Ferrari Technical Office in the 1990s and then worked alongside Coughlan again at Arrows before moving to Jaguar Racing. The hiring of some many top engineers by Red Bull Racing will inevitably result in some pushing and shoving and Taylor seems to have concluded that he has better chances of promotion at McLaren, given that Mark Smith, Adrian Newey and Rob Marshall (formerly a senior designer at Renault) have all turned up in the last 18 months.

Taylor will become "Senior Design Team Leader" and will report to his old friend Mike Coughlan.