Fry on the move…

No, not Nick Fry… It seems that he is firmly employed at Mercedes GP Petronas. The man on the move in this case is Pat Fry, one of the two chief engineers who have been leading the design teams at McLaren in recent years. He has been at McLaren for 17 years, having been recruited to the Woking team from Benetton when Italian engineer Giorgio Ascanelli moved to McLaren in 1992. The two men had previously worked together at Benetton, which Fry joined in 1987. Originally an electronics engineer, he worked as an apprentice with Thorn EMI, at the time one of the United Kingdom’s largest defence companies, helping to develop missile electronics. Passionate about motorcycles, he was unable to get a job in that world and so decided to try cars and was hired to work on Benetton’s active suspension programme. This led to him being appointed head of the R&D at the team’s Godalming design office when John Barnard ran the technical team. He was an active race engineer during the same era and was lured to McLaren to work on active suspensions but returned to race engineering in 1993 and 1994. In 1995 he oversaw Mika Hakkinen until the arrival from Williams of multiple title-winning engineer David Brown. In recent years he and Tim Goss have shared the job of designing and developing the McLaren chassis. Fry worked on the MP4-20, MP4-22 and last year’s MP4-24, while Goss oversaw the MP4-21, the MP4-23 and this year’s MP4-25. The timing of Fry’s departure means that McLaren has a few months to find a suitable replacement.

It is not yet clear where Fry will end up but there has been speculation that he might chose to team up again with Ascanelli, who is now technical director of Scuderia Toro Rosso and keen to improve the team’s technical strength now that it is building its own cars again. It remains to be seen whether Fry wants to move to Italy, a move which would probably be necessary despite the fact that team has a technical office at its windtunnel in Bicester.