John Barnard

John Edward Barnard, (born 4 May 1946, Wembley, London) 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 with McLaren, and the semi-automatic gearbox which he introduced with Ferrari in.

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.

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, 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, and Alain Prost in and , with the first two seasons seeing constructors honours and the team narrowly missing out to Williams in for a third.

After debuting in Lauda's new MP4/1E at the 1983 Dutch Grand Prix with approximately 700 bhp, power steadily rose until the 1.5-litre turbocharged engine named the TTE PO1 produced around 950 bhp at the end of its life in.

By, the working relationship between Barnard and McLaren boss Ron Dennis had deteriorated.

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 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.

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.

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.

Ferrari finished 4th in the Constructors' Championship in 1987 and 2nd in 1988.

Of the Gustav Brunner designed Ferrari F1/87 and the updated F1/87/88C used in the 1987 and 1988 seasons, Barnard stated that the car had a different design than he would have chosen given the regulations, but that by the time he arrived at the team work had already begun on the cars' construction and little could be done to change things without considerable expense.

Given a large sum of money by the team to set up a design office in Guildford in 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).

Gerhard Berger won the last two races of the season, and followed this by a lucky victory at the Italian Grand Prix in September 1988, in a season of total domination by McLaren, whose Honda-powered MP4/4 had been designed by former colleague Steve Nichols, with some help from Barnard's replacement in the team, long time Brabham designer Gordon Murray.

Also, with 1988 being the last year for turbo powered cars, his main focus was on designing the car to conform to the FIA's new regulations which required all Formula One cars to use a 3.5-litre naturally aspirated engine.

While at Ferrari, Barnard ruffled a few feathers with his way of doing things.

Despite being the team's Technical Director, he alienated himself from the team when he decided to set up his office in England and not at the factory in Maranello as had been the tradition even with non-Italian members of the team (like the team's chief engineer at the time, fellow Briton Harvey Postlethwaite).

This revolutionary system had proved fragile in testing since early in 1988 and many in F1 were expecting it to fail.

However, new team recruit Nigel Mansell took the new V12-powered Ferrari 640 to victory first time out at the Brazilian Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro.

Barnard reasoned that it would allow more work to be done on designing the 1989 car without the distractions of the factory and the Italian press who had been known to be scathing on any Ferrari failures.

He also put a ban on the team's long-standing tradition of having wine at the mechanics' lunch table during testing, something that proved unpopular with the team's mostly Italian mechanics.

In 1989, Barnard pioneered the electronic gear shift mechanism – now known as a semi-automatic gearbox – which was operated via two paddles on the steering wheel.