Former Williams and Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley will take up the role of expert technical consultant with Formula One.
Smedley is best known for working with Felipe Massa during his stints at Ferrari and most recently Williams, but the 45-year-old announced he was leaving the Grove outfit last year, though he wanted to stay in the sport.
The new role will task Smedley with making the technical jargon of Formula 1 more understandable to viewers, meaning his future probably lies with the new F1TV platform.
“It’s about trying to get a coherent message [across] in terms of the technical side of Formula 1, ” he explained to the official F1 website.
“How the events unfolded, why people have made certain decisions, and putting that out across the various different platforms, and hopefully telling a better story of Formula 1.
“It’s about really bringing the inner beauty of Formula 1 to the viewer, to the fan.”
He also confirmed that Ross Brawn, who assumed the role of managing director of motorsports and technical director in 2017, was a major factor in why he didn’t seek employment with another team on the grid.
“In conversations with Ross, we were both of the opinion that there’s this really rich seam of technical content, of data, of the way that teams operate, that actually never gets told,” he explained.
“And it’s part of the whole story that underpins Formula 1, which actually the paying public, the Formula 1 fan, never ever gets to see – or they get to see very little of it. So there’s an opportunity in front of us to put that together at some level.
“It’s well documented that I’d taken a decision to have a little bit of time away from the coalface in the teams.
“But I still have a huge burning passion for Formula 1 and I hope that this is a way of me giving a little bit back to the sport, to explain what I’ve learnt over the last 20 years in Formula 1 as an engineer to the viewer; not only the technical side or the operational side, but the human side as well – of what it takes for all those women and men who work in Formula 1 and commit their lives to it.”
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