Marc Priestley has joined Sky Sports F1, it has been confirmed.

Priestley, who worked as a McLaren mechanic from 2000 to 2009, has most recently been part of ITV’s Formula E team. He was also part of Sky’s extensive live testing coverage in 2013. The move is a fairly big surprise considering Priestley was one of the possibilities to join Channel 4. The announcement is low-key, with the Sky website article above simply making reference to “Sky F1’s Marc Priestley”.

With Craig Scarborough and Mike Gascoyne part of Sky’s F1 Report programme in a few weeks, it means that Channel 4’s technical expert is either Gary Anderson, Ross Brawn (as suggested in the blog survey last month) or someone else new to F1 broadcasting. It’s an interesting move, Sky’s reinforcements may imply that Channel 4 have got a relatively big name in as technical analyst.

Update on February 19th at 17:40 – Sky’s website article has been updated, noting that Priestley will be a regular pundit on Sky’s F1 Report show, so it doesn’t look like Priestley will be travelling to races.