Pat Symonds
Patrick Bruce Reith " Pat" Symonds ( born June 11, 1953 in Bedford, England ) is a British motorsport engineer and manager. He became known through senior positions at the Formula 1 racing teams, Benetton and Renault, including as a race engineer of record world champion Michael Schumacher. He held the position of chief engineer of the Renault F1 team, as he had to give it up due to the so-called "crash gate " affair in September 2009.
Life
After time as a designer for two manufacturers of chassis for the British Formula Ford, he worked from 1981 for the Formula 2 project by Toleman Motorsport. A year later he followed the team into Formula 1, which was acquired in late 1985 by the Italian clothing manufacturer Benetton and renamed Benetton Formula One.
Although Symonds came out of the research and development, focused, however, from 1984 to work as a race engineer. In 1984, he worked at Toleman with Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher at Benetton later helped to his first two World Cup titles in 1994 and 1995. Later Symonds was promoted to senior engineer. He remained in this function even after taking over the Benetton team by Renault in 2001.
There Symonds worked mainly on the race car. As chief engineer, he designed and led the race weekends, calculated the race strategies of the driver, put the basic direction of the fixed setups, watching the work at the tests and was in contact with the representatives of the top motor sports authority FIA.
Symonds attended Gresham 's School in Norfolk. He is a graduate and lecturer at the Cranfield University Cranfield University and Honorary President of Motorsport Alumni Association ( Cumaa ), which is considered an excellent British mechanics and engineers in motorsport.
On September 16, 2009 Symonds made in the course of so-called "crash gate " affair around inducing a deliberate crash of Renault driver Nelson Piquet Jr. at the GP of Singapore in 2008, which favored the second Renault driver Fernando Alonso, his post Renault available. September 21, 2009 Symonds was occupied by the FIA with a five -year ban for all FIA events. Renault was sentenced to probation in another similar violation threatened a lock until the end of 2011.
On 5 January 2010, the ban was lifted by a French court. In support, the court stated that the lock had been irregular due to the weak evidence sei.Das Court awarded a compensation of 5,000 euros Symonds to. The International Automobile Federation FIA announced immediately to go against that judgment may be appealed. On 12 April 2010 agreed the feuding parties. The FIA picked the lock. This allows Symonds and Briatore, from 2013 to assume a responsible position in the Formula 1. For this, they waive all legal claims and proceedings against the FIA. By the end of 2012, they may take no items in Formula 1. According to the FIA Briatore and Symonds have the responsibility for the deliberate crash over, apologized and expressed their regret about the incident expressed.
As of 2011, Symonds worked as an external consultant for Marussia Virgin, as he officially not allowed to work in the Formula 1 environment at that time. At the start of the 2013 season, he took over the function of the technology chiefs. But already on 16 July 2013, Marussia and Symonds parted. On the same day it was announced that he was also taken as a successor of Mike Coughlan as technical director at Williams under contract.