Mike Gascoyne has vowed to end his career with Team Lotus.
The 48-year-old was once the highest paid engineer in formula one, earning reportedly $8 million at Toyota in 2005.
The Briton has also worked with top teams McLaren and Renault, his aggressive management style earning him the nickname ’the rottweiler’.
But he has curiously never been part of a world championship campaign, instead earning the reputation of a figure who can turn around a struggling team’s flagging fortunes.
"My career has been built on the ’go-to guy’ when you’re eighth, ninth, tenth and you want to become third," he told the New York Times.
Gascoyne speculated that he has never won a title "because I have always been head-hunted".
"I always used to describe it as the border town that gets the sheriff to come in and clean out the outlaws. And once they have got rid of all the outlaws you don’t need him anymore and he moves on to the next sort of lawless town, and that has sort of been my career," he admitted.
But he insists that Team Lotus, the best of the new 2010 teams owned and headed by Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, is different.
"I think now there is much more of a sense of belonging and it being my team. I certainly will retire at this team.
"Now it is a sense of belonging and wanting to take the team all the way," said Gascoyne. "I think for me it will be a tremendous sense of satisfaction to have taken the team from one bloke sitting on his own in an office to the winner’s podium."