McLaren has confirmed that former engineer Pat Fry will return to the team with immediate effect, taking up the position of engineering director.
Fry has prior experience with McLaren having spent 17 years with the Woking outfit from 1993-2010, helping the team to win three drivers' titles, two for Mika Hakkinen and one for Lewis Hamilton as well as one Constructors' title in 1998.
McLaren has been looking to strengthen their technical team following the departure of Tim Goss. Although the team have signed a deal with Toro Rosso's technical chief James Key, his move has been delayed by Red Bull and is unlikely to happen until 2019, leaving McLaren without a technical chief, therefore Fry's return could be a short-term solution.
The Briton worked on suspension systems when he first joined the team before becoming a mainstay within the engineering departments and also ran as both Hakkinen's and Coulthard's race engineer during his time with the team.
The Englishman moved onto Ferrari at the end of the 2010 campaign to become their assistant technical director, working with Italian designer Aldo Costa, before Costa moved to Mercedes. After four years and continued restructuring of the technical departments, Fry departed the Scuderia at the end of 2014.
He most recently worked with Manor Racing in 2016 as an engineering consultant before the team eventually folded at the end of the season.
McLaren CEO told the media: "We still need to kind of populate – i.e. James’ start – but Andrea Stella is leading all performance, setting the targets, and it’s for Pat as engineering director to execute, so it will ultimately be led by Andrea with Pat the development of next year’s car. And then, of course, there’s lots of people that feed into that.
"Pete Prodromou from an aero, Mark Ingham and Neil Oatley from design, Simon Roberts the COO ultimately responsible for bringing everything together and Gil on the sporting side but at the end of the day it’s Andrea and Pat who are going to drive next year’s car.”
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