The Man Behind the Engine — Keith Duckworth
Formula 1 history is rife with figures who have changed the face of the sport through their individual contributions. Some of these innovators are rightfully venerated, such as legendary designer Adrian Newey, whose cars continue to dominate in Formula 1, or Colin Chapman, whose forward-thinking innovations on both the technical and commercial sides of the sport helped to shape Formula 1 into what it is today.
Other figures are less readily acknowledged though, despite making ground-breaking contributions of their own, and I believe one of those figures is Keith Duckworth.
To a certain audience, Duckworth’s name and contributions to the sport are indeed known and renowned, but he is perhaps less widely recognised than some of the figures mentioned previously. His contributions to motorsport are no less significant than some of the sport’s most legendary figures, and I believe he deserves to be equally celebrated.
Indeed, his work helped to make the careers of many of the sport’s most famous drivers, and helped some of motorsport’s most legendary teams establish themselves. Without Duckworth, they simply would not have been able to make the impact that they did.
Duckworth’s involvement in motorsport started immediately upon his graduation from university, after studying engineering at Imperial College London. Following his studies, he began a stint working for the legendary Colin Chapman at Lotus.
His first major assignment at the Hethel firm was to resolve issues with a radical lightweight transaxle (an integrated unit including a gearbox, axle and differential). The primary problem with the radical design was its hideous unreliability, especially as the gearbox experienced wear.
Duckworth was able to come up with a solution to the problem, displaying an early example of the kind of engineering prowess which would make him so prolific in F1 in later years. However, he butted heads with Lotus boss Colin Chapman, who considered Duckworth’s solution too costly.
After this contretemps, Duckworth resolved to leave Lotus. His time there was not wasted however, as it was at Chapman’s firm that he met Mike Costin, who would go on to be his long-time business partner.
Together, the pair would set up Cosworth — a name now synonymous with automotive history in general, but particularly with motorsport. Costin initially stayed on at Lotus while working on Cosworth projects in his free time.
Despite the disagreement with Chapman which spurred the creation of Cosworth, Duckworth and Costin’s company maintained a close relationship with Lotus. Duckworth cut his teeth as an engine designer by penning a series of 18 engines between 1959 and 1965 which were used in various Lotus cars for both the track and road.
Crucially, 1965 also saw Formula 1 regulations change, with the return of large three litre engines after several years running smaller 1.5 litre units. With Duckworth having established his engine designing credentials, he and Chapman came to an agreement that Duckworth would design a new engine for exclusive use in Lotus’ Formula 1 cars. It was this deal which set in motion a chain of events that would produce the most legendary engine in Formula 1 — and perhaps all of motorsport — history.
In order to get Duckworth’s F1 engine project off the ground, funding was secured by Chapman from the Ford motor company, which forged a long-term relationship between Cosworth and the Michigan-based automotive giant. By 1967 and after a great deal of work, Duckworth’s engine was ready, and it was clear very early on that it was special.
For one, the engine had been designed with a radical new approach in Formula 1 car design in mind. Prior to 1967, the vast majority of Formula 1 cars used a separate frame at the back of the car to carry the engine, gearbox and suspension (with the notable exception of early pioneers such as the Lancia D50).
The 1967 Lotus 49 however did away with this approach, and instead used the engine itself to form the structure of the back of the car, with the rear suspension and gearbox being mounted directly to the engine. Such an arrangement has since become standard in Formula 1.
Duckworth’s engine became known as the Ford-Cosworth Double Four Valve, or DFV, in reference to it having two banks of four cylinders, with four valves per cylinder.
It was designed to support the Lotus 49's arrangement of having the engine as a structural member, while also producing comfortably over 400 horsepower in its initial version. With the engine mated to a similarly revolutionary chassis in the form of the Lotus 49, and the skill of Lotus’ star driver Jim Clark, the 49 and DFV won on debut in F1 — clearly signalling the arrival of a truly excellent F1 engine.
Just how enduring the Cosworth DFV would be was not immediately clear, however. Lotus were actually beaten to the 1967 title by Brabham, primarily as a result of unreliability, as Brabham’s dependable Repco engines carried Denny Hulme to the championship title.
The DFV would have to wait until 1968 to win its first crown, in a year which also saw Lotus lose their talisman when Clark was killed in an accident in an F2 race after winning the first race of the 1968 season with consummate ease.
Lotus’ second driver Graham Hill nonetheless secured the title that year, meaning the DFV had its first silverware to its name. Few at the time realised how much more it would attain in its career after this point.
1968 had also seen a crucial development for Duckworth and the DFV beyond this victory though, as pressure from Ford led to the announcement in mid-1967 that use of the DFV would no longer be exclusive to Lotus.
It didn’t take long before various other teams eagerly snapped up the chance to field the outstanding engine for the first time, with the initial gaggle of adopters soon becoming a flood over the following years.
The widespread adoption of Duckworth’s DFV provided statistics which have scarcely been seen before or since, with every single race in the 1969 and 1973 seasons being won by cars equipped with the Cosworth engine.
The fact that any budding F1 team could purchase a first-rate engine that they knew would be both competitive and reliable genuinely altered the very fabric of Formula 1 in the 1970s, and led to the rise of iconic teams such as Tyrrell and Williams who built their early successes on the back of Duckworth’s engine. With a contribution of that magnitude, Duckworth’s legacy was assured.
By the mid-1970s, after almost a decade of being F1’s foremost engine, the DFV’s dominance looked like it was finally beginning to slip, as more powerful 12-cylinder units from the likes of Ferrari came to the fore. However, towards the end of the decade a development would occur that would give Duckworth’s brainchild a new lease of life — ground effect.
Ground effect aerodynamics were first introduced in 1977 by Lotus on their Type 78 chassis. The principle promised huge downforce at the cost of minimal aerodynamic drag — every aerodynamicist’s wet dream. Importantly though, Ground effect’s efficacy depended on being able to shape the underside of a car’s body into ‘venturi tunnels’ that would force air through a constriction and allow it to exit at the back of the car unobstructed.
The flat-12 engines which had been gaining prominence in Ferrari’s cars were poorly suited for this purpose, as they were extremely wide and filled most of the area at the rear of the car, taking up room that would be needed for venturi tunnels if effective ground effect downforce was to be attained.
The Cosworth DFV however was perfectly suited to the task, with its slender V-shaped cylinder arrangement giving plenty of room for the necessary sculpted underfloor. With the pairing of the DFV and ground effect aerodynamics, Cosworth shot back to the very front of the F1 field, and were once again winning championships in the back of Lotuses, Williamses and Brabhams.
Despite these undeniable successes, Duckworth was not without flaws, and it was the arrival and subsequent rise to competitiveness of turbocharged engines in the late 70s and early 80s which proved to be his hamartia.
Turbocharging — which uses a turbine in the car’s exhaust to spin an impeller that pumps more air into the engine, thereby increasing power — was introduced to Formula 1 in 1977 by Renault.
At least initially, it was treated as little more than a joke by the F1 establishment. The dominant teams of the time were quite happy to stick with their trusty DFVs while pointing and laughing at the Gallic outfit as they struggled to make their engine competitive and reliable.
It didn’t take too long for the smiles of other teams to fade though. By the early 80s turbocharging was gaining traction and starting to show itself as a threat to the hegemony of Duckworth’s engine, with Renault having made what was once a laughing stock into a legitimate contender.
Other teams such as Ferrari quickly leapt on the turbocharging train which the Regie had set in motion, and soon turbo cars were winning races with some regularity.
Duckworth had been dead set against turbocharging even before its challenge to his DFV, but he now considered its growing efficacy to be a threat to the closeness and competitiveness of Formula 1 as a whole.
There was some merit to Duckworth’s claims. Large manufacturers such as Porsche, Honda and BMW were all getting involved in F1 on the back of the turbo craze, and were throwing enormous amounts of money at engine development in an attempt to leap ahead of the competition, while penning exclusivity deals that kept availability of their units to only those who they wanted to have it.
Duckworth considered this a major problem, being a far cry from the fairly humble DFV which was available to anyone who wanted one and was the same across the board barring any tuning that teams wished to do themselves, which made true single-team dominance much less feasible. There was perhaps a hint of hypocrisy at play though, given the DFV had started life as a Lotus-exclusive engine.
Duckworth initially seemed somewhat content to close his eyes and pretend the threat from turbocharged engines did not exist. He talked vaguely about introducing technologies such as a desmodromic valvetrain (closing the engine’s valves directly using a camshaft instead of springs) to extract more power from a non-turbo engine in an attempt to stave off the threat of turbocharging, but no action was taken on this front.
Some Cosworth teams therefore sought out third-party tuners (such as John Judd in the case of Williams, or John Nicholson in the case of McLaren) to increase the performance of their DFVs in an attempt to match what was being put out by turbo teams, who were comfortably outstripping the faithful old DFV in terms of power outputs. This was somewhat successful, but it was an uphill struggle as the venerable design was being pushed to its limits.
Eventually Duckworth was forced to produce an official update to the DFV to try to respond to the turbos. The result was the DFY, which saw widespread adoption among the DFV faithful in 1983 and pushed the Cosworth engine’s horsepower above 500 for the first time for an officially produced variant.
By then it was too late though. Turbocharged engines had truly trounced the Cosworth in terms of power output, and had started to approach the DFV and DFY in terms of reliability too.
Any teams stuck using the Cosworth in 1983 were typically hopelessly outclassed on all but the tightest of circuit, and left to pick up the odd victory with audacious strategies. At the end of the year, a turbocharged car won the world driver’s championship for the first time, essentially sounding the death knell for the DFV’s reign in Formula 1.
Despite this, Duckworth was still reluctant to design his own response to the turbocharged engine craze. It took until mid-1984 for him to finally agree to put pen to paper on a turbocharged Ford-Cosworth engine, and even then, it required substantial cajoling from Ford themselves to get him onboard.
Duckworth initially designed a straight 4-cylinder engine which mirrored the format used by BMW on their engine, which was recognised as one of the most powerful in F1 and which won the 1983 championship in the back of a Brabham BT52.
However, catastrophic issues arose in testing which forced a complete restart of the project and a move to a V6 layout which was more in line with the designs used by Porsche, who were emerging at the time as the new manufacturer to beat with their engine in the back of McLaren’s all-conquering MP4/2.
A deal was eventually struck with the fledgling Haas-Lola F1 outfit (no relation to the current F1 squad), who would have exclusive use of Duckworth’s new engine. After an extensive testing program and assistance from Motorola to design the engine electronics system, the Ford V6 turbo engine — christened the GBA — made its debut at the 1986 San Marino Grand Prix.
Unfortunately, it quickly proved to be relatively underpowered and unreliable compared to the opposition, who had developed their turbo engines since the early 1980s in most cases.
This was further compounded by the refusal of Duckworth to develop special engines for qualifying which would tolerate higher turbocharger boost pressures for short periods and come with an accompanying boost in power.
This technique had become fairly commonplace at the time among manufacturers such as Renault, BMW and Honda, though Duckworth’s view was notably shared by Porsche, who also did not provide McLaren with special qualifying engines.
Regardless, the result was that the Haas cars were often mired down the order in qualifying throughout 1986, and while they did usually make progress in race where they did not retire, they only managed to score points on three occasions that year.
To Duckworth’s credit, when he eventually came around to turbocharging he had some extremely innovative ideas for how to take the technology to new heights. One such idea was “compounding”.
This was a radical concept where rather than purely using the turbocharger to pump more air into the engine, the output of the turbine would instead be fed directly back into the engine to increase power even further.
This idea was very much outside-the-box for the time and was unfortunately never realised by Duckworth himself, but a form of the concept is actually used today in modern F1 engines in the form of the MGU-H hybrid system which has taken F1 engine efficiency to new heights. This level of forward thinking is indicative of the kind of genius which Duckworth possessed.
Additionally, his GBA turbo engine did eventually see some decent results. For 1987 the FIA introduced mandatory valves to limit turbocharger boost pressures and cut power from the levels seen in 1986, as part of a plan to gradually phase out turbocharged engines by 1989, when they would be banned completely.
When such a valve was fitted to Duckworth’s GBA, it lost less power than rival manufacturers’ engines, which placed it on a more level playing field against them.
1987 also saw the supply of the GBA engine change teams. The Haas outfit which had received the engine in 1986 withdrew from F1, so a deal was negotiated to supply the Benetton team which had burst onto the grid in 1986 with BMW engines and become race winners in their debut season.
The relationship between Benetton, Cosworth and Ford which was forged in 1987 would prove to be a fruitful one. Benetton’s B187 with the GBA engine proved to be a consistent points finisher and occasional podium contender which showed the strides that Duckworth’s engine had made and that he was still a capable engine designer even when working with a type that was not his preference.
Furthermore, with turbocharger boost pressures lowered even further for 1988, and the 1989 ban on turbo engines confirmed, many teams saw fit to return to non-turbo engines in 1988 in order to get a head start on their usage before 1989 and avoid the cost of continued development of costly turbo units which were soon to be banned.
Benetton was one of these, and the engine they swapped to was yet another variant of Duckworth’s legendary DFV, called the DFR. The old warhorse was fettled to within an inch of its life, and was capable of producing some 620 horsepower with the improvements.
With the DFR, Benetton recorded 7 podiums and finished third in the championship as the highest placed non-turbo team, giving Duckworth’s magnum opus a last hurrah before it was finally put out to pasture once and for all.
The relationship between Benetton and Ford which had begun with Duckworth’s GBA engine continued after 1988, and eventually culminated in Michael Schumacher winning the 1994 F1 championship with a Ford-Cosworth badged engine in his car.
While the engine in the back of Schumacher’s Benetton was not designed by Duckworth, it did still bear the name of the Cosworth company which he had started some 36 years earlier with his old Lotus Colleague Mike Costin.
It should also be noted that this article has not touched upon the impact of Duckworth on motorsport outside F1, and this is an area worthy of mention as it further supports the suggestion that he was a titan of motorsport.
Variants of the DFV engine have permeated almost all corners of motorsport, and notably in the case of Indycar were even developed into turbocharged units developing over 800 horsepower — a decision which bemused Duckworth when first undertaken in the mid 1970s.
Such engines powered every single Indy 500 winner from 1978 until 1987, displaying a similar monopoly to the one that the DFV had in Formula 1.
It can therefore be said with little doubt that despite his foibles, Duckworth and his work have had a profound impact on the very fabric of motorsport, with ideas which he conceived being integral to Formula 1 and the wider racing world to this day.
The fact that his DFV engine and the company he co-founded stood, and indeed goes on standing, as such a fixture in motorsport is a fitting legacy for the great man who gave them to the world.
