Ferrari has confirmed that Pat Fry will join the team as assistant technical director as of next week.
A short statement from the team said: “Ferrari announces that, as from 1st July, Pat Fry will join the Scuderia’s Technical Department. 46-year old Fry, who has previously worked for Benetton and McLaren, will take on the new role of Assistant Technical Director, reporting directly to Aldo Costa, while the current structure of the Technical Department remains unchanged.”
The move is an interesting one as Ferrari had appeared to shy away from hiring many English speakers in the post-Ross Brawn era, although Rob Smedley and Aussie Chris Dyer retained senior engineering positions.
The news will no doubt be frustrating to McLaren, because Fry had been a key player for years, with detailed knowledge of all aspects of the car, and he had only recently left the team.
Fry was an electronics engineer involved with missile technology before he got into motor racing. He joined McLaren in 1992 having been Martin Brundle’s race engineer at Benetton that year. His various jobs there included spells as race engineer for Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard, as well as a role overseeing both team cars. Latterly he has been the engineer with overall responsibility for cars built in even numbered years.
Adam Cooper F1 
Amazed that he did not have to take 6 or 12 months ” gardening leave”.
I assume he will be taking back the balance of the information that McLaren got from Ferrari back in the “Spygate” scandal?
@Peter G
I was thinking the same thing, especially in the context of the spat between Lotus and Force India re Mark Smith. Perhaps Fry had already stepped down in January but the news only became public some time later?
JamesF1
well that is one way to get the f duct right
Fry was responsible for the cars used in the last few odd numbered seasons, not the even numbered ones: MP4-20 (2005), MP4-22 (2007) and MP4-24 (2009).
I thought Newey designed the MP4 20