Sergio Rinland

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Sergio Rinland is an Argentine engineer best known for his work in Formula One.

[edit] Career

Rinland was born in Bahía Blanca, Buenos Aires Province. He studied Mechanical Engineering at Argentina's Universidad Nacional del Sur and moved to England in 1980, where he designed a Formula Ford 1600 car. He was hired by the RAM F1 team in 1983 to design the team's cars after it fell out with chassis supplier March. For 1986, he moved on to Williams and helped to design the very successful FW11 chassis.

For 1987, Rinland joined Brabham, but the team temporarily withdrew from F1 at the end of the year. He thus moved to Dallara to design its first F1 car for use by Scuderia Italia in 1988. Brabham returned in 1989, and Rinland stayed with the team until its eventual collapse in 1992.

Rinland then established his own design company which produced a car for the Fondmetal team. The car only appeared a in few races in 1992 before the team also went bankrupt. After a few years in the U.S., he briefly returned to F1 in 1995 to become Techical Director of the new Forti team, although he quickly moved on the German Touring Cars. From 1996 to 1999, he worked for Benetton before becoming the Chief Designer for the Sauber team. Rinland designed the team's most successful F1 car, the C20, but fell out of favour with the team. He moved on to Arrows for 2001, and stayed there until the team's withdrawal the following year.