Winning ingredients

“These cars are heavy – nearly 900kilos – and they go monumentally quick, so you had two fundamental problems. First, the structure to carry everything had to be very, very stiff, and on top of that it had to be safe, because places like Le Mans had the drivers exceeding 200mph four times a lap. It was so stiff that we couldn’t torsion test it. Each monocoque cost £50,000, compared with £10,000 for aluminium, and the tooling to cure the material was bloody expensive. The safety of the structure was proved after Win Percy’s huge 200mph crash on the Mulsanne. He wrote me a very nice letter after that, thanking me for making such a strong car. It had literally saved his life.”

“Tom Walkinshaw said I could do anything I like, so long as the car used Jaguar’s V12. That was a challenge, because it was an enormous thing. Allan Scott and I had to get it lowered down. It was powerful and reliable, eventually reaching 740bhp. I had to push the engine as far forward as possible, literally almost touching the driver. I created a recess in the monocoque. That helped get the weight toward the centre.”

“Porsche had a race-designed engine and gearbox. We had an off-the-shelf gearbox, and it was about 50 per cent reliable – if you were lucky! It was easy for the drivers to make bad gearchanges, knock the corners off the dogrings. In 1988, at Le Mans, Jan Lammers’ car ended up doing the last hour in fourth gear. We made it by the skin of our teeth.”