It wasn’t a good sign for F1. And no one found anything to say, but Andretti Global’s hiring of Pat Symonds as an executive engineering consultant shows that there can be revolving doors in the Circus without any respect for roles.
It is true that Michael Andretti’s team is a structure that is consolidating, which is (yet) not recognized in the closed world of F1 which does not want the entry of the eleventh team, but the fanfare that seemed completely out of place to us yesterday the good American manager sounded: “We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Pat to the Andretti family. His in-depth knowledge of aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics and F1 Power Units will be fundamental to continuing to build a competitive team I believe his experience has been instrumental in shaping our path in Formula 1 and his vote of confidence in joining us speaks volumes about this next step as our work continues apace.”
Michael Andretti, owner of Andretti Group who wants to enter F1 in 2026
Photo by: Alexander Trienitz
Well there would be nothing to say if the person in question had not been the technical director of Formula 1 until the day before yesterday, concluding a seven-year cycle in which he worked for the championship promoter, contributing to the writing of the 2022 rules of ground effect single-seaters and also to the definition of the single-seaters that will race from 2026.
The International Federation will formalize the rules that will give shape to F1 in the near future on June 6th and Symonds will make the leap even before that date. The 70-year-old Englishman joins Andretti Global with a change of role that cannot fail to cause discussion. Those who participated in the drafting of the rules bring their pool of knowledge as a gift to a team. That’s no good.
It is true that there was a precedent with Marcin Budkowsi, the engineer who was head of the FIA’s technical department. The Pole knew all the secrets of the single-seaters of the time, but his move to Renault in 2017 sparked violent controversy, so much so that the International Federation imposed a period of gardening on technicians who left the federal body having knowledge of all the secrets of the single-seater.
This is not the case with Symonds who leaves the Liberty Media working group and after a short period of convalescence for a problem. We imagine that Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of F1, must not have liked this handover too much, given that the holder of the commercial rights of the top championship had expressed his negative opinion on the expansion of the Circus to the Andretti team.
A technician with proven experience, Pat carries with him a bad professional shadow: he was among those convicted for the Crashgate scandal in the 2008 Singapore GP. A very bad story which also involved Nelsinho Piquet and Flavio Briatore in the Renault team: the Brazilian driver he had deliberately crashed to cause the safety car to come in, after his teammate, Fernando Alonso, had already made the pit stop and for this reason he won the race.
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