McLaren extend aerodynamics chief Prodromou's deal
McLaren have extended the contract of their technical director aerodynamics Peter Prodromou, one of the key architects of the team's revival over the past two seasons.The 56-year-old was appointed to his role in March 2023 as part of a major reshuffle of senior technical leaders under team principal Andrea Stella.Prodromou had been sidelined under previous leadership structures but Stella identified his expertise as a key ingredient needed for success.The team started the 2023 season at the back of the grid, but ended last year as constructors' champions, the first time they had won the makers' title since 1998.Stella said: "The cultural, organisational and technical leadership Peter has brought has been invaluable, and he has been a key architect of the team's performance turnaround, on and off the track."The journey we have been on together as a team, we could not have done without Peter, and we look forward to continuing our quest of fighting for further World Championships together."Prodromou began his F1 career at McLaren in 1991 before joining Red Bull in 2006 to work alongside Adrian Newey.He was Newey's chief designer at Red Bull through their four consecutive world championship doubles with Sebastian Vettel from 2010-14, before rejoining McLaren.Before Stella was appointed team principal in December 2022 by McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown, Prodromou had been moved onto side projects under former technical director James Key.But Stella removed Key and set up a new structure. Prodromou now works alongside three other engineers in leading the design of the McLaren car under Stella - chief designer Rob Marshall and technical directors of engineering Neil Houldey and performance Mark Temple.Marshall, who became Red Bull's chief designer after Prodromou left, joined McLaren at the start of last year.Prodromou said: "It is an honour to be part of such a collaborative team and contributing to this strong upwards trajectory. Following last season's success, I look forward to contributing further to our shared ambition of securing more World Championships."I'm grateful to Zak and Andrea for their continued confidence in me as a technical director aerodynamics and also to all my colleagues in the team who have provided the highest class of support to me at a personal and professional level."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
17 minutes ago
- BBC News
Norris 'made a fool' of himself in Piastri collision
Lando Norris said he "made a fool" of himself in colliding with McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in the Canadian Grand 25-year-old Briton ran into the back of Piastri as they battled in the closing stages of the race, and Norris' mistake has left him 22 points behind the Australian in their fight for the with use of the DRS overtaking aid giving him a straight-line speed advantage, clipped the back of Piastri's car as he tried to grab the inside line into Turn Piastri had not left the space for the move to come off. Norris' front wing and right-front wheel hit the back of the rival McLaren and broke his suspension. Piastri was able to continue without said: "I didn't expect to pass Oscar on the outside into Turn One. It's just, I should never have gone for it, I guess is my complete hindsight thing."I thought he was starting to drift a little bit to the right, so I thought I had a small opportunity to go to the left. But it was way too much risk, especially on my team-mate."So, happy nothing happened to him. I paid the price for my mistake."The incident followed more than a kilometre of close racing between the team-mates, which McLaren have pledged to allow to continue this season. Norris has 'a lot of regret' Norris had dived for the inside at the hairpin and briefly grabbed the position as both were challenging Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli for the final podium position behind winner George Russell's Mercedes and Max Verstappen's Red cut back on the exit, and they ran side by side down the long back straight, with the Australian on the inside. Norris braked earlier on the outside for the final chicane, to give himself a cleaner run through the corner and faster exit on to the pit was terrific, clean, respectful racing, of the kind McLaren have been demanding from their drivers this season. Until it went said: "Our rule number one is to not make contact with your team-mate and it's what I did. McLaren is my family. I race for them, you know, every single weekend. I try and do well for them, more than I often try and do well for myself."So, when I let them down like this and when I make a fool of myself in a moment like today, yeah, I have a lot of regret."I've let down the team. So, that's going to stay with me for a little while. But at the same time, part of moving on is trying to put it behind you and crack on with the next weekend."Norris had no realistic option but to accept fault, but that does not always make a difference with racing drivers. And his decision to do so immediately defused any tension there might have been as a result of the said: "Lando is a very good guy, and it's in his character and in his personality to say exactly what he thinks. And if that's detrimental to himself, or if it's about himself, then it doesn't matter for him. And I think that's a great quality of Lando."It's good for the whole team going forward that we can have these conversations and go racing like this and have things not go the way we want, and get through them."Both men minimised the importance of the difference this had made to the gap between them in the championship, which is more than double what it was going into the race, but still with 14 races left and only 10 said: "Plenty more races left. I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect to catch him easily. But I have to work hard for it and make less mistakes than I did this weekend." 'No doubt' McLaren support Norris McLaren are taking a mature, sporting and open approach to the fight between their drivers, based on a philosophy of fair competition. They have been saying all year that they considered it a question of when not if they were involved in an was in this spirit that team principal Andrea Stella took the situation."We never want to see two McLarens having contact," he said. "This is part of our principles. We saw it today."This is just a result of a miscalculation, a misjudgment from a racing point of view, which obviously should not happen, but at the same time is part of racing."And we did appreciate the fact that Lando immediately owned the situation. He raised his hand, he took responsibility for the accident, and he apologised immediately to the team. He came to apologise to me as team principal in order to apologise to the entire team."On this one I want to be completely clear; it's full support to Lando. We will have conversations and the conversations may be even tough."But there's no doubt over the support we give to Lando and over the fact that we will preserve our parity and equality in terms of how we go racing at McLaren between our two drivers."The situation would be different if Lando had not taken responsibility and apologised."In the heat of the moment, that looks like the worst disaster ever. But in reality, the strength of being racers comes from having a strong culture." Where does Norris go from here? Taking a step back from the immediacy of the drama, the bigger concern may be what it says about Norris and his state of mind - and raise questions as to what to do about has not been an easy season for Norris so far. He was very much McLaren's leading driver last year. He was the one who took a semblance of a title fight to Verstappen in the closing stages of the the expectation that McLaren would continue their strong form in the second half of last year into this, Norris was the championship favourite going into the the form between the two McLaren drivers has switched. Piastri has been the more convincing. He has five wins to Norris' two. He is ahead 8-4 on their qualifying head-to-head. And Norris has been making mistakes, particularly in has been saying all year that a lack of feel from the front axle of the car has been affecting his ability to predict its behaviour when taking it to the limit on one Canada, McLaren introduced a small tweak to the suspension geometry, around where the upper wishbone meets the front wheel, in an attempt increase feel. Stella said there were "no downsides from Lando's point of view", and Norris ran it all weekend. Piastri felt he didn't need it and continued with the original was probably the quicker McLaren driver in Montreal - he did a stunning lap on used tyres to progress beyond the first part of qualifying. But he again over-drove when it mattered, making mistakes on both of his laps in the final session, and ending up seventh on the said after qualifying that Norris had "just tried too hard", and pointed out that on his final lap he was on target for pole before brushing the wall at Turn Seven."The speed is there," Stella said on Saturday evening. "We just have to polish the fact that sometimes you sort of have to accept that you can't always go 100%, especially when a little mistake can be so costly."Stella has emphasised that McLaren have been working with Norris on his difficulties this the race, he was asked what more they could do to get him into the right headspace, if that was indeed the problem. But he said he did not see a connection between Norris' wider issues and the specifics of the collision in Canada."At the moment I wouldn't say that that's the reason why there was a misjudgment today," Stella said. "I think this is too long a shot in terms of correlating these two events."Definitely there will be good conversations, but they will happen once we are all rested and calm."Lando himself will have to show his character to overcome this kind of episode, make sure that he only takes the learnings, he only takes what will make him a stronger driver."
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Canada winner Russell 'driving better than ever'
George Russell says he feels like he's "driving better than ever" after winning his first race of the season at the Canadian Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver, who started on pole, held the lead from Max Verstappen at the start and controlled the race from that point. It was the Briton's first victory since Las Vegas in November and fifth podium of the 2025 season. Verstappen's Red Bull team have lodged a protest over Russell's driving behind the safety car in the final stages, following Lando Norris' collision with McLaren team-mate Oscar 27, also started on pole in Montreal last year but could only finish third."It feels a bit of a redemption compared to last year because I was really disappointed with my performance last year and we should have won," he told Sky Sports."It was my mistakes that let the team down but I'm in a different place right now and I feel like I'm driving better than ever. I felt pretty chilled throughout the whole race."Russell has been with Mercedes since the 2022 season and is out of his contract come the end of the season. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff suggested it was only a matter of time before a new deal is said: "The ambience in the team is great and we've agreed on some kind of timeline when we want to settle these things, with triple headers getting out of the way and one race after the other in June and July but we're going to get there." Antonelli becomes third-youngest podium finisher It was a successful day all round for Mercedes with 18-year-old rookie Kimi Antonelli finishing third for his first podium in Formula – at 18 years and 294 days old – becomes the third-youngest podium finisher of all time behind Max Verstappen and Lance fourth, he overtook championship leader Oscar Piastri at the start and dealt with pressure from the Australian in the closing stages of the race."It was so stressful but super happy," Antonelli said. "The last stint I pushed a bit too hard behind Max and I killed a bit of the front left and I struggled a bit at the end, but I'm really happy to bring the podium home.""This track has been good for us and the car has been incredible all weekend. Hopefully we can carry the same momentum into the next few races."Russell said Mercedes performed so strongly at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve because a "smooth" track and "low-speed" corners suited the characteristics of the on the calendar is Austria from 27-29 June and the Red Bull Ring will be a very different challenge to Montreal."It's going to be on old tarmac, more high-speed corners and it's going to be hot as well," Russell said."We've got three things working against us. I'm not going to sit here and say Mercedes is back because we were the quickest team here last year but we didn't win the championship. We know where we need to improve."
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Oscar Piastri makes stunning statement after his teammate almost ruined his Canadian Grand Prix with crash that has the F1 world up in arms
Oscar Piastri believes there were no 'bad intentions' from his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, who caused the dramatic high-speed Canadian Grand Prix collision between the pair that's only boosted the Australian's F1 title hopes. As George Russell delivered a brilliant pole-to-chequered flag drive to win from Max Verstappen in Montreal on Sunday, Norris crashed out of the race, taking all the blame for banging his car into the back of Piastri as they duelled dramatically for fourth place with just three laps left. Going for a gap on the inside that simply wasn't there in a bid to edge past the championship leader, the 320kph collision ended with Norris's car stricken, its front suspension broken, and Piastri's coming off relatively unscathed so he was able to complete the race in fourth place under the safety car. Norris ended up saying sorry to Piastri after the race, with the Victorian graciously shaking his hand and accepting his apology - 'that's all right' - for a rash manoeuvre which could easily have sent them both spinning out of the race. Instead, the calamity for a pointless Norris meant Piastri increased his championship lead over his teammate from 10 points to 22. Verstappen is 43 points adrift of the Aussie. Norris accepted immediately he was in the wrong. 'It is all my bad,' he said on the team radio. 'All my fault. Unlucky. Stupid from me.' Piastri believes there were no 'bad intentions' from his McLaren teammate Later, he added: 'I take full blame and I want to apologise to my whole team and to Oscar for attempting something like that.' The ever cool Piastri himself shrugged it all off, saying he thought it was a 'fair' attempt. 'I don't think there were any bad intentions involved. I think it was just unfortunate really. I will go and have a look, obviously,' he added. 'Lando made quite a large move into turn 10. I held my own into the chicane and it was definitely a tough battle, but a clean one up until that point.' A duel like this, and a probable collision, was first predicted back in April by McLaren boss Zak Brown, but Piastri said he hoped they'd still be allowed to go head-to-head again. 'We're fighting for a world championship and very thankful to the team that they allow us to race,' said the Aussie. 'I don't expect this to change anything in terms of that. We'll keep going racing until the end.' F1 fans watching at home were stunned by the collision. 'Where the hell was he goin?! posted one X user. 'Norris being too greedy here!' replied another 'If only Lando Norris fought Verstappen like he fights Piastri,' posted a third. Kimi Antonelli was a spectacular third - earning his first podium finish at just 18 - to complete Mercedes' big afternoon, but the balance of power in the McLaren camp has once more shifted significantly in Piastri's favour with his points advantage now almost an entire race's worth. Piastri was pipped from third on the grid at the start by the bravura Antonelli and had a rare difficult outing outside the top three. Norris, who had started from seventh on a different strategy on hard tyres that allowed him to run longer in the race, did well to get himself into position to challenge Piastri with 11 laps left. It was a terrific duel, as Norris first dipped underneath Piastri at the hairpin only for Piastri to draw back alongside him into the final chicane and regain the position before the English driver's over ambitious swoop down the inside. Behind Piastri, Ferrari pair Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton were fifth and sixth. Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso, Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg, Haas' Esteban Ocon and Williams' Carlos Sainz Jr. rounded out the top 10. Piastri certainly wasn't satisfied, despite his increased lead. 'For me, this weekend wasn't good enough,' he said. 'And it's still far, far too early to think that's a comfortable advantage or anything like that.'
