Former managing director of the Holden Racing Team, Craig Wilson, has been elevated to the top job at Williams Advanced Engineering.

Wilson spent six years in Australia from 2005 as the managing director of both the Holden Racing Team and Walkinshaw Performance.

He resigned from that position, and his role as director at Holden Special Vehicles, in mid-2011 amid a restructure of the businesses.

Subsequently moving back to the UK to co-found an engineering consultancy firm, Wilson joined Williams’s engineering arm last year, initially as its head of commercial operations.

The WAE business was established in 2008 in an effort to diversify the Williams Group away from the main Formula 1 team.

The company’s projects to date have included collaborations with Porsche, Nissan Nismo and the FIA’s new electric Formula E Championship.

“I’m delighted to be joining a company with Williams’ illustrious history and I look forward to helping its Advanced Engineering division continue to evolve to support the growing requirements of our customers and the market sectors in which we operate,” said Wilson upon being confirmed in the role this week.

“As a business Williams Advanced Engineering stands out due to its origins in the very competitive world of Formula One with its rapid technology development requirements.

“The combination of accelerated development timescales, a collaborative approach to projects and strong expertise in energy efficient technologies makes for a powerful proposition.”

WAE’s formation coincided with the development of Williams F1’s ultimately unraced flywheel-based Kinetic Energy Recovery System for the 2009 Formula 1 season.