page_title: John Barnard
section_title: McLaren era
hierarchical_section_title: John Barnard / Early career / McLaren era
caption_attribution_description: The 1981 McLaren MP4 Formula One car. In the Donington Grand Prix Collection museum, Leics., UK.
context_page_description: John Barnard is an English race car designer and is working with Terence Woodgate designing high specification carbon fibre furniture. Barnard is credited with the introduction of two new designs into Formula 1: the carbon fibre composite chassis first seen in 1981 with McLaren, and the semi-automatic gearbox which he introduced with Ferrari in 1989.
context_section_description: His success in the United States brought Barnard to the attention of new McLaren team boss Ron Dennis, and in 1980 he joined the team and began working on the McLaren MP4 (MP4/1), the first Carbon-Fibre-Composite (CFC) chassis in Formula One, alongside the Lotus 88 designed by Colin Chapman. The chassis itself was built by one of the team's sponsors Hercules Aerospace in the US after former Hercules apprentice and then McLaren engineer Steve Nichols had advised Barnard, who along with Dennis had been unsuccessfully searching in England for a company willing to take on the job, that the US based company might be their best choice, and quickly revolutionised car design in Formula One with new levels of rigidity and driver protection.
  At the 1981 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the strength of the MP4/1 was given a very public test when John Watson suffered a massive crash in his MP4/1 coming out of the second Lesmo turn. Many feared the worst for the Irishman as crashes like that in Formula One often led to the death of the driver. However, the strength of the Carbon Fibre monocoque (which many in F1 had been sceptical of) saw Watson survive unhurt to the surprise and delight of many, not the least being Watson himself and Barnard. Within months the design had been copied by many of McLaren's rivals. In 1983, Barnard pioneered the 'coke-bottle' shape of sidepods still visible to this day.
  During his time with the team McLaren became the dominant force within Formula One, taking drivers titles for Niki Lauda in 1984, and Alain Prost in 1985 and 1986, with the first two seasons seeing constructors honours and the team narrowly missing out to Williams in 1986 for a third. The 1984 season also saw McLaren drivers Lauda and Prost win an amazing 12 of 16 races with the TAG-Porsche powered McLaren MP4/2 (Prost won 7, Lauda 5, but Lauda scored in more races and won the championship by only half a point from his team mate). By the time Barnard left McLaren for Ferrari at the end of 1986 his cars had won 31 Grands Prix for the team.
  The 80° V6 TAG engine had been financed by Mansour Ojjeh of Techniques d'Avant Garde (TAG) and was built by Porsche to Barnard's specification for the MP4/1E and its highly successful replacement the MP4/2. After debuting in Lauda's new MP4/1E at the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix with approximately 700 bhp (522 kW; 710 PS), power steadily rose until the 1.5-litre turbocharged engine named the TTE PO1 produced around 950 bhp (708 kW; 963 PS) at the end of its life in 1987.
caption: McLaren MP4/1 was the first Formula One car to use the now ubiquitous carbon fibre composite monocoque
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