Hinchcliffe's engineer parts with SPM

Veteran race engineer Allen McDonald, who looked after James Hinchcliffe since his arrival at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports in 2015, has parted ways with the team.

Following a long and successful career with other teams, including Andretti Green Racing, the championship-winning engineer was part of the group that came together to form the FAZZT Race Team IndyCar program with Alex Tagliani in 2010. Upon FAZZT's closure and sale to SPM co-owner Sam Schmidt at the end of the year, McDonald returned to Andretti to serve as technical director through 2012.

In 2013, the Briton signed on with SPM and scored a pair of victories with Hinchcliffe during their three-year stint. Although it's unclear where McDonald will land, a number of IndyCar teams closed the season with a need to strengthen their engineering programs, which could move him to the top of the shopping list.

"I'm no longer with the fine folks at SPM," he told RACER. "I've been there for five years, and it was just time to move on. The reason I went there is I wanted it to be super successful, and I was there way back when with the FAZZT team, to help start it. But we weren't where we wanted to be, so it was time to move on."

A replacement for McDonald at SPM, which is expected to retain Hinchcliffe on a new multi-year contract, has yet to be identified. He and Hinchcliffe scored two victories during their time together; the first coming in the wet at New Orleans in 2015, the other at Long Beach this year.