{"id":5936,"date":"2010-06-02T17:42:32","date_gmt":"2010-06-02T21:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=5936"},"modified":"2010-06-02T17:42:32","modified_gmt":"2010-06-02T21:42:32","slug":"new-force-india-tech-boss-defects-to-lotus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/new-force-india-tech-boss-defects-to-lotus\/","title":{"rendered":"New Force India tech boss defects to Lotus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Force India&#8217;s newly-appointed technical director is switching teams to Lotus, it was announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Lotus, F1&#8217;s new Malaysian-backed team, said in a statement that Mark Smith will become technical director &#8220;at the end of his Force India notice period&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The news is an embarrassment to Silverstone based Force India, who promoted Smith to the role of technical director in late February as the Sauber-bound James Key&#8217;s replacement.<\/p>\n<p>The teams are set to battle one another in the courts, with Force India accusing Mike Gascoyne and Lotus of basing the T127 on a model left behind in an Italian wind tunnel.<\/p>\n<p>Smith has previously worked with Renault and Red Bull.<\/p>\n<p>He joins Force India colleagues Lewis Butler (chief designer) and Marianne Hinson (head of aerodynamics) in also defecting to Lotus.<\/p>\n<p>Lotus&#8217; technical boss Gascoyne has previously worked with Smith at Jordan, Renault and Force India.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Lewis and I were together at Force India, and Lewis also worked with Mark Smith at Red Bull, and Marianne and I have known each other since 1999 when I gave her her first job in F1 at Jordan, so we all know each other very well,&#8221; said Gascoyne.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a9 RIF|GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Force India&#8217;s newly-appointed technical director is switching teams to Lotus, it was announced on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,290,5340,1751,912,1752,647,305],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5937,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5936\/revisions\/5937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}