By Edd Straw Friday, August 26th 2011, 10:35 GMT
Michael SchumacherMichael Schumacher's race engineer at Mercedes has changed, with his former assistant race engineer Peter Bonnington taking over the role from Mark Slade.
Slade was formerly Kimi Raikkonen's race engineer at McLaren, and was recruited from Renault, where he worked with Vitaly Petrov, for this season. He has taken up what a team spokesperson described as "a factory-based role within race engineering" because he has "decided to stop travelling".
Bonnington assumes the role with immediate effect having worked with Schumacher since the seven-time world champion came back to Formula 1 at the start of last year.
Jock Clear, who was Nico Rosberg's race engineer last year and for the first three races of of this season before new recruit Tony Ross joined from Williams, has stepped in as Schumacher's performance engineer for the final eight races of the season while a permanent replacement is found.
The team said that the move had been made with immediate effect in order for Bonnington and Schumacher to develop their relationship ahead of the 2012 season.
