Who is James Key? All you need to know about Alfa Romeo’s latest recruit

It was recently announced that James Key has been appointed by Alfa Romeo as their technical director. He will start working for the team in September this year.

Though not many fans might know much about Key, he has been a prominent figure in Formula 1 for quite some time now. He has worked on several teams and has heaps of experience in the sport.

In his early days, James Key studied mechanical engineering at Nottingham. He was later sponsored by Lotus Engineering in 1996. After completing his studies, he joined the Jordan Grand Prix F1 team in 1998 as a data engineer and was soon promoted to race engineer for Takuma Sato.

After the team's ownership changed to MF1 Racing in 2005, Key was promoted to technical director for the entire team, becoming one of the youngest to hold the position in the sport. He led the team as a technical director for several years, as the Spyker F1 team transitioned into Force India.

In April of 2010, James Key finally left Force India to join the Sauber F1 team (currently known as Alfa Romeo), replacing Willy Rampf as a technical director.

After two years, in 2012, he moved to Scuderia Toro Rosso (currently known as Scuderia AlphaTauri) as a technical director. He stayed there for quite some time after making the jump to McLaren in 2018. Key once again took on the position of technical director for the British team.

In McLaren, he worked with Andrea Stella and Andreas Seidl for several years until March of 2023 when he was released from the post due to a major technical department restructure inside the team.

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James Key happy to join Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo released a statement on June 7 confirming that they have appointed James Key as their technical director. In the statement, the British engineer shared his thoughts on returning to a team he used to work for as a technical director and how he feels.

The statement read:

“I am delighted to be returning to Hinwil to work with old, and new, colleagues at Sauber; I have very fond memories of my time there before. I am looking forward to leading the technical side of the team at one of the most critical junctures of its long history as we head towards a new and exciting future."

"There is a huge amount of work ahead of us, but I am confident that every single member of our team working in Hinwil will have the commitment, determination and hunger to get us to the top."

Since he has previously worked with Andreas Seidl at McLaren, and knows several team members when he was a technical director at Sauber, it is safe to say that James Key will settle in pretty quickly.