IndyCar: Rahal team hires new Technical Director

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) announced today a move that will strengthen their engineering group and position the team for success in the coming years. Stefano Sordo, who has over 20 years of engineering experience with top Formula One teams, will join the organization as technical director of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES program beginning October 1.

Sordo spent the past six seasons with McLaren Racing F1 as head and director of vehicle performance and, prior to that, was with Red Bull Racing F1, among other teams. He will oversee a multi-tiered engineering structure at the team’s new headquarters in Zionsville, Indiana that will have an emphasis on a variety of areas and lay the foundation for the team to achieve their goals. The move is another indication of the commitment that the team has placed in their future in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES.

QUOTEBOARD:

STEFANO SORDO: “I’m very excited to be joining Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s team in the INDYCAR series. It is a very challenging and very competitive series where I think every competitor can have a chance at winning every time they participate in a race providing you get all the ingredients right. The excitement of this new role for me is to challenge myself and see if with the experience and methodology developed through many years spent in F1 I can help the team moving forward in becoming a consistent front-running team. This is the clear challenge and target that I set for myself and I look forward to getting started. I would like to thank Bobby and Mike for this opportunity and their trust in my abilities, and I hope I can repay them with successes at the track.”

BOBBY RAHAL: “I’m so pleased that Stefano will be joining the team as technical director. He is well-respected in the industry and his track record speaks for itself having worked with organizations like McLaren and Red Bull in Formula One, among others. I’m confident that Stefano will bring to us a perspective that will raise our game against our competition and work well with our existing engineering staff.”

MIKE LANIGAN: “Stefano has shown he is capable of leading large groups of engineers at the top level of motorsport and we couldn’t be more pleased to have him join our team. His depth of experience, combined with his knowledge of the various areas to maximize the performance of a race car will be a tremendous asset to us going forward.”

ABOUT STEFANO SORDO

Sordo earned a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Polytechnic University in Milan, Italy. He started his professional racing career as a design and performance engineer at Tatuus F3 in 1996. In late 1996, he moved to DC Cook Motorsport’s F3 and F3000 team as a race engineer for the 1997-98 seasons. He joined McLaren as a race engineer with their F3000 program for 1999-2000 before he got his start in Formula One with Arrows as a race and test engineer for the 2001 and 2002 seasons. He then joined Jaguar Racing F1 for the 2003 and 2004 seasons as race engineer. At the end of 2004, Jaguar Racing F1 became Red Bull Racing F1 and he stayed on until 2016 working first as race engineer and then moving into the aerodynamic department from 2007 for the subsequent 10 years in the position of head of aerodynamic performance. While Sordo was there, the team won four consecutive Drivers and Constructors championship titles with Sebastian Vettel between 2010-2013. He then joined McLaren F1 in October 2016 and has been head and then director of the vehicle performance department until joining RLL as technical director.