Q&A with Mike Gascoyne, Caterham F1 chief technical officer

As if he wasn’t busy enough already, Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne is taking on more work, as head of a new division, Caterham Composites. While he admits it’s an exciting prospect, he insists that it won’t deflect him from the task on the track: to create a new legend for Caterham.

It seems like you’ve got a busy winter ahead: not only are you building the first Caterham F1 car but you’ve got a new secondary role as head of Caterham Composites. Can you explain what that involves?

We’ve set up a company that sort of incorporates my company MGI and the people that work for that company over in Cologne. We have two main guys there, Phil Hall and Duncan Bell, who were the head of composites and deputy head of composites respectively at Toyota when I was there. They’ve specialised in composite design and in the use of composites, mainly in Formula One, for years but we want to expand that into other fields, especially aviation but also into nautical and automotive spheres.

So it’s almost a composite consultancy company, to look at applications outside of Formula One based on the composite technology we currently have in Formula One.

What was the impetus behind this? Is it simply the fact that you have this team of people who have this expertise and we wanted to build on that?

It’s the fact that we have a group of people we’ve worked with before but it became very quickly apparent that with Tony’s links in the aviation business there was a big synergy there. So we had some aviation-related projects and then with Caterham covering all of the automotive links it just made a whole lot of sense for us to come together and set up a company that utilised the benefit of the shareholders’ links and combined them with the talents of Duncan and Phil and the other people we’ve got involved in the project.

How many people are involved in it now and how big will it get?

We have some major projects on the go and we are currently pitching for some very large projects, so it could grow very quickly to having 30 or 40 people working on the initiative, depending on the client. We have a lot of interest from the automotive sector and in aviation, where we’re working with some of the major players. We’ll be making a couple of announcements very soon about the first projects we’re working on, which is the best way to kick off a new, rapidly expanding business.

You are going to retain your role as Chief Technical Officer with Caterham F1 but how are you going to divide your time?

I look at it in two ways. Firstly, compared with the last two years we now have a much more capable technical team here. I have Mark Smith here now as Technical Director who, on a day-to-day basis, does the job I was doing a year ago. So that frees me up considerably. I’m still going to races and will oversee the team there. I’ll still also oversee the team at the factory too, but I’ll probably be spending something like one day a week dealing with Caterham Composites stuff.

That ratio might change as the business progresses but for me it’s a very interesting challenge. I think we can very rapidly build up a sizeable and profitable business and I think that when you’ve been in a sport like Formula One for so many years sometimes it’s quite a breath of fresh air to think outside the box that Formula One puts you in.

Do you think that this is a perfect example of showcasing how Formula One is all about innovation, technology transfer and being on the leading edge of materials development?

Yes, it’s really interesting that in industries such as aviation, where they feel like they have a very high-end product, there is actually a lot we could show them. There are so many ways of using new materials that Formula One has been pushing and exploiting in a far greater way than any other industries and I think that’s where Caterham Composites is coming from.

And vice versa, do you think that there are things that Formula One teams could learn from aviation?

I think our applications are quite specialised but I think that this separate division, Caterham Composites, can feed back into the Formula One team. It does give us an added resource. In Formula One we will be doing a lot of motorsport-related projects as well, so it significantly expands the capability of the whole group.

Are you going to be involved in designing any new Caterham road cars?

Not directly but I think from use of composites I will be. I think it’s something I’d like to have an input into. However, the road car division are the experts in their arena. I do think, though, that we can assist them with the use of composites in modern road cars and therefore Caterham Composites will be the division that they will come to in order to solve composite-related issues.

Let’s talk about Team Lotus. Sum up what the last two years have meant to you?

I think that we can be very proud that we brought the Lotus name back to Formula One. However, I don’t think we get too emotional about waving goodbye to Team Lotus, simply because we have always been clear that it was the name of the team we have used for the past couple of years, and what makes up the team has been the really important factor in what we’ve already achieved. My overwhelming feeling is that is that we can be proud of what we did as Team Lotus. But we have our own brand now. Our destiny is in our own hands and although it would be nice if it had been the Lotus brand it wasn’t, in the end, possible and it’s for Group Lotus to do what they wish with the name. But I think, overwhelmingly, what we did was unique and we can be proud of what we achieved over the past two years.

And the future? How do you see Caterham F1 developing?

The same – building and growing as a team. We’ve finished the championship in 10th place two years running and that puts us on a sound financial footing. We are now an established Formula One team. I think with the announcements we’ve made about corporate developments and the new partners we have, we are showing we are a really serious outfit, so now it’s time to take the fight to more established teams and start beating them.

So a proper racing team?

We’ve always been a proper racing team but we were one constrained by the limitations of being a new team. Now, though, it’s time to move on. We’ve established ourselves and it’s now time to get on with beating the opposition.

And that now means creating a legend instead of building on one.

Absolutely. We’ve got our name, we’ve got our identity and now we’ll get out there and go racing.