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Gérard Ducarouge (23 October 1941 – 19 February 2015) was a FrenchFormula One car designer whose career in motorsport started in 1965 when he joined the French constructor and racing teamEquipe Matra Sports. He designed theMatra MS80 car which, entered by the BritishprivateerMatra International team ofKen Tyrrell, won both theWorld Drivers' Championship (forJackie Stewart) andWorld Constructors' Championship in the1969 season.^[1] After leaving Matra he also designed cars forLigier andLotus which won several races in the 1970s and 1980s.

Like many designers, his background was in aeronautical engineering. He qualified at college with Bacalauréat Technique et Mathématique and won his Degre Superieur after studying at the École Nationale Technique d’Aéronautique.

After leaving college, he joinedNord Aviation in 1964, where he worked on various missile projects. However, he became restless and applied for a job as a technician atMatra racing in December 1965. This was shortly after the creation of Matra-Sports and Ducarouge started work on theirFormula 3 programme, and from 1966 he also began improving theirFormula 2 cars. He steadily rose within the organisation to head of operations, where he designed theFordCosworthDFV-poweredMatra MS10 andMatra MS80 car, the latter winning the1969 Formula One World Championship withJackie Stewart. Ducarouge then designed theMatra MS670 car which won the24 Hours of Le Mans in1972,1973, and1974. It also delivered theWorld Championship for Makes to Matra in both1973 and1974 seasons. At the end of 1974, Matra pulled out of racing.

Ducarouge resigned shortly after to begin work at the new Formula One team founded byGuy Ligier at Vichy, close to Gerard’s home town ofParay-le-Monial. He began work onLigier’s entrant to the1976 season, the JS5 which retained links with Matra including their 3-litreV12 engine andSEITAGitanes brand sponsorship. At the1977 Swedish Grand Prix the team celebrated its maiden Grand Prix victory.

Subsequent victories were to occur throughout the1979 season. In1981 a revised Matra V12 was fitted in the latest Liger chassis and withTalbot backing it seemed as though the team would be contenders to win theconstructors' championship. But by mid-season Ducarouge was unceremoniously sacked by Guy Ligier. He quickly accepted an offer to join theAlfa Romeo team where he persuaded the team to create his first carbon fibre chassis. Despite this and other innovations instigated by Ducarouge, Alfa Romeo failed to deliver on increasingly high expectations. Following the 1st qualifying session of the1983 French Grand Prix whereAndrea de Cesaris was disqualified for his car being underweight, Ducarouge was blamed and dismissed.

He was not to remain out of work for long, asPeter Warr fromTeam Lotus head hunted Ducarouge. Lotus had witnessed a severe decline in fortunes following their dominant1978 campaign, and had culminated with the death of their founderColin Chapman in December 1982. Following extensive persuasion Ducarouge joined the team following the1983 Belgian Grand Prix. He immediately began work on theType 94T which was designed and built in five weeks, and helped salvage some degree of success for the remainder of the 1983 season. Team Lotus began a major restructuring headed by Ducarouge and culminated with the years 1984–87 representing a major revival of the team’s fortunes.

In1984, Ducarouge's next Lotus, the95T, was widely regarded as the finest handling chassis throughout the season withElio de Angelis finishing third in the Drivers' Championship despite not winning a race, and teammateNigel Mansell finishing tenth. Though de Angelis had a consistent season and finished in the points in the first 10 races of the season, he was a long way behind the dominantMcLaren-TAGs of 1984 World ChampionNiki Lauda and his teammateAlain Prost.

The still bornLotus 96TIndy Car incorporated the innovative use of lightweight aluminium foil honeycomb in the chassis replacing the previous nomex construction. The gain of strength with no weight penalty was to become a hallmark of subsequent Lotus Formula 1 chassis.

For the start of the1985 season Ducarouge was joined at Lotus byAyrton Senna. At thePortuguese Grand Prix held at a torrentialEstoril, Senna would score his maiden win in a DucarougeLotus 97T. This was to be the first of seven and culminated in the 1987 victory in Detroit. His 1987 car, theLotus 99T was the first Formula One car to be fitted with a computer-controlledactive suspension system. Also, after four seasons of using the turbochargedRenaultV6 engine, the 99T would use the powerfulHonda V6 turbo. Senna, growing increasingly dissatisfied with Lotus' ability to build a championship contending car, would by the end of the season be unkindly referring to the 99T as nothing more than a98T (the team's1986 car) with a Honda engine instead of a Renault. The 99T was also visually more bulky than its competitors fromWilliams,Ferrari and McLaren.

Senna would depart for McLaren for the start of the1988 season leaving Ducarouge to develop and enter the much hoped landmarkLotus 100T. Despite the 100T using the same specification turbochargedHondaV6 engines as McLaren, the team only finished in fourth position and Lotus failed to win a race for the first time since1984 while McLaren would win a record 15 of the seasons 16 races, giving Ayrton Senna his first World Championship. The major faults of the 100T (driven in 1988 byreigning World ChampionNelson Piquet and Japanese driverSatoru Nakajima) were allegedly laid at incorrect aerodynamic data amassed during testing at Comtec, as well as the chassis being reported to be like "jelly on springs" and not rigid enough to handle the abrupt power delivery of Honda's 650 bhp (485 kW; 659 PS) engine.

Ducarouge departed Lotus to return to France and take up an offer from theLarrousse team. At Larrousse he developed theLola chassis with Chris Murphy (who would later join Lotus for the 1992 season), though results were few and far between with Larrousse using the somewhat unreliableLamborghiniV12 engine. In1991 he rejoined Liger and remained as Technical Director until mid-1994.

In the twilight of his career, Ducarouge retraced his career path back to Matra where he worked as the International development director on various projects, including the development of theRenault Espace F1.^[2]

Ducarouge died on 19 February 2015 aged 73.^[3]

• Profile at grandprix.com

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