John Barnard

Barnard at the 1986 British Grand Prix

**John Edward Barnard** (born 4 May 1946) is an English engineer and racing car designer. Barnard is credited with the introduction of two new designs into Formula One: the carbon fibre composite chassis first seen in 1981 with McLaren, and the semi-automatic gearbox which he introduced with Ferrari in 1989.

## Early career

Barnard gained a diploma from Watford College of Technology in the 1960s and unlike many of his contemporaries he did not follow a lengthy academic career, instead choosing to join General Electric Company.

In 1968 Barnard was recruited by Lola Cars in Huntingdon as a junior designer and began working on many of the chassis manufacturer's projects, including Formula Vee racers and numerous sports cars. While at Lola, Barnard was introduced to Patrick Head, who later helped Frank Williams found the Williams Formula One team. The two engineers became good friends and Head was best man at Barnard's wedding in the early 1970s.

In 1972 Barnard joined the McLaren Formula One team and remained for three years working alongside Gordon Coppuck on the design of the Championship-winning M23 chassis and other McLaren projects, including the team's IndyCar.

By 1975 Barnard had been hired by Parnelli Jones to work with Maurice Philippe designing the team's Formula One racer (the Parnelli VPJ4) which campaigned from 1974 to 1976. The cars best finish was 4th by Mario Andretti at the 1975 Swedish Grand Prix. After Philippe left Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing, Barnard modified the design for the Indycar circuit. Further Indycar designs followed and in 1980 the Barnard-designed Chaparral 2K chassis took Johnny Rutherford to the prestigious Indianapolis 500 and the CART drivers title.

### McLaren era

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 chassis in Formula One, alongside the Lotus 88 designed by Colin Chapman. The chassis itself was built by team sponsor Hercules Aerospace in the US, after former Hercules apprentice and then McLaren engineer Steve Nichols had advised Barnard that the US-based company might be their best choice. Barnard, along with Dennis, had been unsuccessfully searching in England for a company willing to take on the job.

The MP4/1 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 teammate). 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.

### Ferrari years

By 1986, the working relationship between Barnard and McLaren boss Ron Dennis had deteriorated. This led to speculation that Barnard would leave the team, and it came as no surprise when it was announced before the 1986 German Grand Prix that he would be joining Ferrari in 1987. The Scuderia had not won a Grand Prix since Michele Alboreto had won the 1985 German Grand Prix, and the designer had been able to name his terms. Given a large sum of money by the team to set up a design office in Guildford in Surrey, England, Barnard founded the Ferrari Guildford Technical Office in early 1988 and began work on returning Ferrari to regular winning (according to Barnard, the name of the Guildford office had been a play on words of one of Ferrari's road cars, the GTO).

## Formula One experience

 1986–1990
 1990–1992

## Notes

1. ↑ Team Bosses: John Barnard. *OldRacingCars.com*.
2. ↑ FIRST LIGHT – THE STORY BEHIND THE MCLAREN MP4/1 (4 May 2016).
3. ↑ John Watson 1981 Monza crash on YouTube
4. ↑ <templatestyles src="Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css"></templatestyles>Pye, Steven (19 November 2014). "When Niki Lauda beat team-mate Alain Prost to the F1 title". *The Guardian*. Retrieved 19 April 2020.