Paddy Lowe


Patrick Allen Lowe FREng, known as Paddy Lowe, is a British motor racing engineer. He served as the chief technical officer at Williams Racing, and previously as the executive director of the Mercedes Formula One team.

Education

Lowe attended Sevenoaks School from 1976 until 1980 and graduated from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge in 1984 with a degree in Engineering.

Formula One career

Williams (1987–1993)

In 1987 Lowe was employed by Williams as Joint Head of Electronics. He spent six years at Williams, during which time he oversaw the development of active suspension, used to help Nigel Mansell win the 1992 World Championship..

McLaren (1993–2013)

Lowe moved to McLaren in 1993, when he was employed as Head of Research and Development, a department subsequently renamed Vehicle Technology. He was head of the department for eight years until 2001, when he was appointed Chief Engineer Systems Development, a role focusing on the race programme for the McLaren MP4-20. In May 2005 he assumed the role of Engineering Director, which gave him responsibility for all the engineering departments. Lowe has not been without controversy, when he was personally fined 150,000 Euros for his involvement in the 2007 Formula One espionage controversy, which centred around the theft of 780 pages of confidential Ferrari documents. In January 2011 Lowe became the team's Technical Director. He left McLaren in 2013.

Mercedes (2013–2017)

Lowe moved to the Mercedes Formula One team as Executive Director on 3 June 2013.
In 2015 Lowe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Along with his elder brother Professor Michael Lowe they are the first brothers to be elected Fellows of the Academy.
On 10 January 2017, Mercedes announced that Lowe had left the team, and entered a period of garden leave.

Williams (2017–2019)

Lowe returned to Williams as Chief Technical Officer on 16 March 2017. He replaced Pat Symonds, who left the team at the end of 2016. Alongside his technical position, Lowe became a shareholder in the team. The Williams cars under his supervision, FW41 and FW42, turned out to be largely uncompetitive and relegated Williams to the bottom of the Constructors' Championship in 2018 and 2019. On 6 March 2019 it was announced that Lowe would be taking a leave of absence due to personal reasons after there were many delays in the production of the Williams 2019 challenger. On 25 June 2019, his leave was made permanent and Lowe left Williams with immediate effect.

Formula One World Championships

Lowe is married to screen actress, Anna Danshina. He has two children from a previous relationship: Noah Kelly and Finty Kelly.