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John Wickham, who was team manager at Renault, has decided to leave the Enstone-based outfit, AUTOSPORT has learned.

Wickham, who helped found the Spirit F1 outfit in the mid-1980s and was more recently technical and operations manager of A1 GP, was signed up by Renault from this year's European GP onwards.

The plan had been to share his responsibilities with newly promoted track operations director Alan Permane, who moved up from his old role as chief race engineer last month.

Wickham has elected to hand his notice in and has not travelled to this weekend's Indian GP with Renault. AUTOSPORT understand that he has already left the team to take up a role in sportscar racing.

Team principal Eric Boullier said recently that he had expected a recent staff reshuffle, which included the departure of sporting director Steve Nielsen, to be a positive for the team.

"Part of what were Steve's responsibilities will be taken over by Alan Permane, who is now track operations director," Boullier explained in September.

"In addition, John Wickham is part of our team and further changes will be announced shortly. I expect this transition to be very smooth."