Toyota staff follow Trulli to Lotus

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Lotus has confirmed two former Toyota team members have joined their team.

Dieter Gass began work for Lotus as deputy technical director early in January. He was previously chief race and test engineer at Toyota.

And Gianluca Pisanello, who was Jarno Trulli’s race engineer at Toyota has also moved to Lotus. He will be one of the team’s two race engineers, and although the second is yet to be confirmed it would be logical for Pisanello to continue his partnership with Trulli.

A spokesperson for the team said it was unlikely they would test in Britain between the car’s launch on Feburary 12th and the group test at Jerez on the 17th, where they will have their first test with the other teams, as they would not have enough parts.

The launch of the first Lotus F1 car in 16 years is expected to take place in London.

Update: Sure enough, I’ve just heard from Lotus that Pisanello will be Trulli’s race engineer.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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8 comments on “Toyota staff follow Trulli to Lotus”

  1. Will be interesting to see what the Toyota boys can achieve considering how little they did with a budget orders of magnitude bigger.

    1. Well it depends how they are managed, just look at BAR, they were decent then when they became Honda, they were horrible! Then when Brawn managed the team, they became World Champions! Of course there were a few other key people who helped to make those cars better, but if the rest of the staff are able to work under a better leader then they can achieve much more success.

  2. They may not have the constrains that Toyota had either, and could be free from the politics. If they have a decent budget I can see them being the best of the new teams

  3. I expect a number of the ex Toyota squad to join stefan GP who are on the lookout for a number of positions. On the job section of thier website it does say “Slightly advantage if you are ex Toyota F1!”.

  4. But what about the rest of the squad?

    1. waiting for better offers ….

      sorry couldn’t resist.

  5. I saw the headline and couldnt help but think:

    “Its a new form of Trulli Train! God help us all…” :)

  6. I can see much amusement stemming from the name of Dieter Gass. “That’s Trulli, passing Gass in the garage….”

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