British automotive engineer Rob Smedley, who currently works for the organizers of Formula One and has previously worked for Scuderia Ferrari as an engineer in the test team and a race engineer for Brazilian driver Felipe Massa, has confirmed that he might be interested in joining a team, yet he did not provide more details regarding what would be needed to tempt him back.
Rob Smedley joined Jordan Grand Prix at the start of 1999, where he worked as a data acquisition engineer, responsible for telemetry data used by the team’s race engineer and for the 2002 and 2003 Formula 1 championships he was promoted to a role of track engineer for the team. Ahead of the the 2004 F1 campaign, he was signed by Scuderia Ferrari: during the first year he worked in the Maranello test team and then became the long-term race engineer to Felipe Massa.
He continued as Felipe Massa’s race engineer at the Italian side and moved to Williams when Felipe Massa joined them from Ferrari for the 2014 campaign, heading the team’s trackside operations. The British engineer left Williams following the 2018 championship, one season after the Brazilian driver ended his career in F1.
After leaving Williams, Rob Smedley worked for Formula 1, first as a consultant and currently as the ‘director of data systems’. But the former Ferrari man be interested in returning to the competition side with a team?
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He recently revealed that he would indeed be interested, but pointed out that he wants to be part of a team that has a good possibility of fighting for the race wins and F1 titles, being “committed” to that cause.
Rob Smedley took part in the most recent episode of the F1 Nation podcast, alongside ex-Ferrari test driver Pedro de la Rosa, who asked him if he misses race engineering: “No, I don’t miss race engineering, I haven’t race engineered for a long, long time now.” – Rob Smedley said.
“You know when I was at Williams, I kind of run all of the race team, so that was a different experience. I’ve been public about this lots of times, if the right project came up, I would be interested, of course I would, but it’s got to be the right project. I’m lucky enough that I still get offers now to go back into Formula 1, but I don’t want to go back into Formula 1 to make up the numbers, I want to go to Formula 1 where it’s a team that has a strong possibility and is committed to winning.” – he added.
In the end he once again highlighted that a Formula 1 comeback for him would need to be with a string team, capable of challenging for ambitious goals:
“You always miss that Sunday afternoon, that buzz on a Sunday afternoon, when you’re racing and all the work that the 1000 men and women in your team have done and you’re pitting that against another competitor, that’s a drug, you can never not miss that having experienced it for 20 odd years. But, do I want to go and make up the numbers? No, thank you.” – Rob Smedley concluded.
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