Geoff Willis, formerly the technical director at Honda, is returning to the F1 paddock with Red Bull. Willis has been away from Formula 1 since leaving Honda mid-way through the 2006 season, however it has been announced he will be joining Red Bull as their new technical director, effective as of Monday. He is replacing Mark Smith who is moving into another position within Red Bull.
Willis is no stranger to some of the Red Bull team having worked with their chief technology officer, Adrian Newey, at Williams.
Recently Willis spoke to magazine F1 racing and commented that Red Bull needed to refine their organisation. “The car has all the usual refinement of Adrian’s designs, and the technical group have taken on the challenge of introducing their own quick-shift gearbox design,” he said. “Reasonable qualifying pace has not, however, been turned into results, their finishing record being jointly the worst, along with RBR’s sister team, Toro Rosso. The signs of poor organisational control – repeat faults leading to poor reliablity – are clear. There’s plenty of technical skill, but they need to put mechanisms in place to ensure that the design team’s efforts are not squandered.”
