Former Ferrari chief track engineer Chris Dyer has joined Renault as the head of the team's vehicle performance group, F1i has learned.

Dyer effectively replaces chief race engineer Ayao Komatsu in the role at Enstone, with F1i revealing last year that Komatsu would leave the team to join F1 newcomers Haas.

Having started his F1 career at Arrows, Dyer moved to Ferrari and became Michael Schumacher's race engineer for his 2003 and 2004 drivers' championships. Following Schumacher's departure from the team, the Australian was Kimi Raikkonen's race engineer for his 2007 title before being promoted to the role of chief track engineer.

Dyer was replaced by Pat Fry following the 2010 season, with a strategic error seeing the team lose the drivers' championship by calling Fernando Alonso in to the pits to cover Mark Webber, a move which allowed Webber's Red Bull team-mate Sebastian Vettel to take the title.

In 2012 Dyer moved to another chief engineer role, this time for BMW's DTM program. However, he will now return to F1 with Renault, which this year will have a full works team having completed the takeover of Lotus.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

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