page_title: Owen Maddock
section_title: Cooper's declining years
hierarchical_section_title: Owen Maddock / The Cooper years / Early Formula Three and Formula Two work / Cooper's declining years
caption_attribution_description: A Cooper T60 Formula One car of 1962. In the Donington Grand Prix Collection museum, Leics., UK.
context_page_description: Owen Richard Maddock was a British engineer and racing car designer, who was chief designer for the Cooper Car Company between 1950 and 1963. During this time Maddock designed a string of successful racing cars, including the Formula One World Championship-winning Cooper T51 and T53 models.
  The T51 was the first mid-engined car to win either the World Drivers' or Constructors' Championships, feats it achieved in the hands of Jack Brabham in 1959. A year earlier Stirling Moss had taken the first ever Formula One victory for a mid-engined car in another Maddock-designed vehicle: a Cooper T43. In addition to his Formula One work, Maddock also produced race-winning Formula Two, Formula Three and sportscar designs. After leaving Cooper in 1963 Maddock went on to a successful career as an engineering consultant, including a spell as a hovercraft designer working for Saunders-Roe on the Isle of Wight. In his spare time he also enjoyed racing hovercraft, and was a co-founder of the Hovercraft Club of Great Britain.
  Away from engineering Maddock was an accomplished jazz musician.
context_section_description: The 1961 Formula One season saw the introduction of radically revised engine regulations. Maximum capacity was cut from 1954-1960's 2.5 L to only 1.5 L (92 cu in), greatly reducing the power and torque available, but also bringing fuel economy and weight benefits. This change required Formula One chassis designers to rethink their approach to a car's whole construction as poor handling and excess weight could no longer be effectively compensated for by greater engine output. Cooper suffered their first season without a Championship race win since 1958, and finished only fourth in the World Constructors' Championship.
  With the introduction of the smaller engines came a need for a less heavily built gearbox that would offer six ratios to choose between, to keep the engine within its narrower torque band. Following an interim six-speed update of the C5S model, Maddock set about a complete redesign to produce the new C6S. Although the new gearbox was just as reliable as the five speed model, its mechanism was extremely complex and proved unpopular with the mechanics who were tasked with maintaining it.
  Brabham's departure to found his own team at the end of 1961 not only deprived the Cooper equipe of its main driving talent, but also a major contribution to the design talent of the works. Bruce McLaren was also an able engineer – who also later founded his own eponymous team – but Cooper never found the same success as they had enjoyed during the Australian's tenure. Maddock and McLaren's Cooper T60 car of 1962 provided Cooper with its last works victory in Cooper ownership, when McLaren took first place at the 1962 Monaco Grand Prix, but British rivals Lotus and BRM had taken the engineering initiative and Cooper started a lengthy decline in performance.
  The introduction of the monocoque chassied Lotus 25 during the 1962 season, and its dominance in the hands of Jim Clark during 1963, highlighted the shortcomings of its spaceframe rivals, including the new Cooper T66. To counteract this, urged on by John Cooper, Maddock started to develop Cooper's own monocoque car. Maddock's design not only followed strict monocoque principles, but also included some very advanced composite technology. The outer, stressed skin was, like the Lotus, formed from sheet aluminium. However, to support this skin, rather than using traditional bulkheads and metal ribs, Maddock specified a lining of aviation-grade honeycomb structure aluminium with a fibreglass inner skin, forming a sandwich structured composite. The resulting chassis (sometimes referred to as the Cooper T69) was far stiffer than previous Cooper products, but with variable wall thicknesses and bonded-in fuel cells it was complex to manufacture. With development over runs and limited finances Cooper decided to drop the concept. It would be 16 years until a car using the same technology won the World Championship: the Williams FW07 of 1980.
  Long before this time, however, Maddock had had enough. Feeling trapped by his role at Cooper, and wanting to try his hand at something new, he resigned in August 1963.
caption: A Cooper T60, the last Maddock-designed car to win a World Championship Grand Prix
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix E550", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2007:09:05 14:05:02", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "238", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "2/13", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:08:22 13:39:11", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:08:22 13:39:11", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "2", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "27/10", "EXIF ApertureValue": "3", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-1/5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "36/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2760", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2062", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1086", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5292", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "5292", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}