Jorg Zander joins Honda from BMW

Zander joins the team from BMW Sauber, where he had been chief designer before moving to a role at BMW's Munich headquarters to work on transmissions.

He is no stranger to Honda, having worked as chief engineer for transmissions between 2002 and 2005.

"I am delighted to be returning to Honda and to England, where I know I will feel very much at home again," he said.

"Honda is a fantastic group of people. It is also a team with enormous potential and the determination to fight hard to achieve its ambitions. I am very excited that I will be a part of that."

Zander will renew his working relationship with aerodynamic Loic Bigois, whom he used to work with at Williams. Bigois joined Honda earlier this week after being released early from his contract at his former Grove-based team.

Honda's racing senior technical director Shuhei Nakamoto welcomed Zander's appointment, and was confident that the team would make improvements in the near future.

"This is the latest in a series of key appointments that we have made in order to bolster our team," said Nakamoto.

"We have some very talented people at Honda but Formula One is a rapidly changing sport and we need to evolve in order to keep pace.

"With the steady performance improvements we have made over the past few races and a strengthened technical team, I am sure that the difficulties we have seen in the first half of 2007 are now behind us."