Felipe Massa’s former race engineer at Ferrari, Rob Smedley, will join Williams ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix and will be joined by Marussia’s Richard Lockwood.
Smedley will fulfil a newly created position as head of vehicle performance, which the team says “will strengthen the trackside team whilst also supporting the development work back at the factory to help bring more performance to the car throughout the season.”
The Briton will be supported by race engineers Andrew Murdoch, who is engineer to Felipe Massa, and Jonathan Eddolls, who remains with Valtteri Bottas in 2014.
Lockwood completes the trackside operation line-up, joining the team from Marussia as head of race strategy. He will work with current strategist Randeep Singh.
Speaking about the additions, chief technical officer, Pat Symonds said: “Williams is undergoing change and these new appointments reflect how high our ambitions are. We have a number of senior people joining us to assist us in the pursuit of those ambitions and I am extremely excited to welcome them on-board.
“2014 gives us the biggest change to the technical regulations that I have seen in my career, and so it will be important to add further depth to the talent we already have here as we head into the new season. Williams has always prided itself on engineering excellence and this latest announcement is part of our continued goal to bring success back to the team.”
