Steve Nichols | |
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| Born | Stephen Anderson Nichols (1947-02-20)20 February 1947 (age 78) |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Known for | Formula One car designer |
| Notable work | McLaren MP4/4 |
Stephen Anderson Nichols (born 20 February 1947 inSalt Lake City,Utah)[1] is an Americanengineer who is best known as a car designer for manyFormula One teams from the mid-1980s until2001.
After saving up enough pocket money to buy himself a go-kart to go racing around his local streets when he was 14, his parents feared he would have a bad accident with a real motor car on the streets and instead bought him a racing go-kart to drive on the local track, not realizing that Steve would actually get interested in motorsport as a result, going on to race inFormula Ford throughout America's northwest. And it was after seeing an article inRoad & Track magazine about "Chapman's Tubeless Wonder" (theLotus 25) in 1962, that Nichols decided he wanted to be aFormula One car designer and from then on (aged 15) he tailored his education towardsmechanical engineering and achieving his goal.
Nichols graduated from theUniversity of Utah in 1972, and reasoning that no professional racing team would want a green, straight out of university engineer, instead he found work as a development engineer atHercules Aerospace in Salt Lake City in 1973 where he would work for 4 years. While at Hercules he was part of the team that worked on stage three rockets for theTrident missiles that were used byUnited States Navynuclear submarines. After this, Nichols then went to work forGabriel Shock Absorbers at the time when the company was looking to break into motorsport in the US with theUSAC Indycar circuit. At Gabriel, Nichols worked on designingDampers that would eventually be used by the likes ofAl Unser,Parnelli Jones,Team Penske andA. J. Foyt.[2]
In mid-1980 he moved into his ultimate goal in motorsport and joinedMcLaren in Formula One. He had worked with English designerJohn Barnard atChaparral in Indy racing designing Dampers for the team, and had rang him looking for work in Formula One. At the time, Barnard had begun working withRon Dennis at hisFormula 2 teamProject Four Racing while they were in the process of their merger/takeover of McLaren. Barnard told Nichols that they had unsuccessfully searched all over Britain for someone willing to make his then revolutionaryCarbon Fibre monocoque for what would become theMcLaren MP4/1. Nichols then suggested his old employer Hercules who had been using carbon fibre in the aerospace industry for a number of years. Hercules was more than willing to do the work, while also getting their name on the McLaren F1 cars as a team sponsor.[3]
In1982, Nichols became the race engineer forNiki Lauda and remained so until Lauda's retirement after1985. This included being Lauda's engineer during his 3rd and final World Championship winning season in1984 while having to overcome a faster and younger new team mate inAlain Prost (Lauda won by the smallest margin in F1 history, just 0.5 points). Following Lauda's retirement, Nichols became race engineer for1982 World ChampionKeke Rosberg in1986 and formerFerrari driverStefan Johansson in1987.
In late 1986 following the departure of John Barnard to Ferrari, team owner Ron Dennis named Nichols as the Chief Designer for both the 1987 and1988 turbo cars, while Nichols also continued as one of the two race engineers within the team.
His first car, theMcLaren MP4/3 powered by the turbochargedTAG-PorscheV6 engine, carried Alain Prost to three victories in 1987, the last of which being the1987 Portuguese Grand Prix where Prost scored his 28th win, passingJackie Stewart's record of 27 that had stood since1973. Stefan Johansson (who was not really expected to win a race, and did not), scored five podium finishes during the season. At the end of the season, the MP4/3 had given McLaren second place behindWilliams in the Constructors' Championship.
Nichols' second car was the highly successfulMcLaren MP4/4, powered by a turbochargedHonda V6 rated at approximately 650 bhp (485 kW; 659 PS) (Honda never gave out their true power figures and as such figures are often quoted from anywhere around 650 bhp to up to 1,000 bhp (746 kW; 1,014 PS)). The MP4/4, driven byAyrton Senna (whom Nichols was also the race engineer for in both1988 and1989) and Alain Prost, almost completely dominated the 1988 season with 15 race victories from 16 races, as well as 15 pole positions. The only race the MP4/4 did not win was theItalian Grand Prix which was won byGerhard Berger'sFerrari. Berger also claimed the only non-McLaren pole of the year at theBritish Grand Prix. McLaren won the 1988 Constructors' Championship by a then record 134 points from Ferrari, having wrapped up the title in Round 11 inBelgium. Senna and Prost also finished the Drivers' Championship in first and second place, giving the talentedBrazilian his first World Championship.
During the season, McLaren also scored a record ten 1-2 finishes from the seasons 16 races.
While some articles give credit toGordon Murray for the MP4/4's design and claim that it was based on Murray's earlierBrabham BT55 for the 1986 season, many at McLaren, including former team managerJo Ramírez, and a number of McLaren's Design Office including the Project Leader on the Monocoque and front suspension Matthew Jeffreys, aerodynamicistBob Bell and engineerAlan Jenkins, have pointed out that the MP4/4 was a development of the MP4/3 and that Murray, who became McLaren's Technical Director in 1987, had very little to do with the design of either of Nichols' cars.
Commenting on the differences of the BT55 and MP4/4, Nichols remarked:
The only similarity is that they were both low. But if you look at anything else – the rules were different [and therefore] the fuel tank size was different, the drivetrain was different, different engine, different gearbox – everything.[4]
Nichols suggested that Murray has tried to claim credit for the MP4/4 in the hopes that its reputation would overshadow that of the BT55's engine and gearbox issues:
Gordon had the Brabham BT55, which was by any standard a terrible car. He’s got that blot on his copy book. So now I think he feels the need to claim credit for the MP4/4, to expunge the BT55 off his record.[4]
Senior design engineer Matthew Jeffreys also refuted Murray's claims of the Brabham being the basis of the MP4/4:
"None of us were looking at BT55 drawings and we wouldn't have wanted to be either – it was a disaster. Why would we want a McLaren to have copied a car that had huge problems and was also two years old?"
Murray has long denied Nichols' involvement in the MP4/4's development, stating in an interview withMotor Sport: "This thing about Steve Nichols being chief designer is the biggest load of rubbish you've ever heard. The MP4/4 was not designed by Steve Nichols, I can promise you that."[5] Murray also threatened Nichols and Jeffreys with legal action over their written claims in the McLaren MP4/4 Owners’ Workshop Manual written by Steve Rendle and published byHaynes.[4] However, McLaren internal memo's actually written by Murray do clearly put Steve Nichols as the Chief Designer of both the MP4/3 and its highly successful successor, the MP4/4.[6]
At the end of1989, Alain Prost asked Nichols to join him atFerrari in1990 despite that in their 6 seasons together at McLaren (1984-89), Nichols had actually been the race engineer for each of Prost's team mates, including winning World Championships with Niki Lauda in 1984 and Ayrton Senna in 1988.
In 1990, Ferrari used theV12 poweredFerrari 641 which was a development of another revolutionary John Barnard design, theFerrari 640 from 1989 (it was revolutionary in that instead of the usual manual transmission, the Ferrari had a then new for F1Semi-automatic transmission). By the time Prost and Nichols arrived at Ferrari, John Barnard had left to begin work with theBenetton team.
Prost won five races and was a serious contender for the 1990 world title until a controversial collision triggered by Ayrton Senna put both drivers out of the race at theJapanese Grand Prix. Nichols stayed at Ferrari until December 1991, dismayed by the chaos in the team compared to the "well oiled machine" he was used to at McLaren. Taking over as the teams Technical Director after Barnard's departure, Nichols collaborated on the design on theFerrari 642 and643 used by the team in1991 with Chief Designer Jean-Claude Migeot. The cars were largely unsuccessful, not winning a race with the 643 actually contributing largely to Prost not only having his first winless season since his rookie year in1980, but also in being fired from the team following the1991 Japanese Grand Prix when he said"a truck would be easier to drive than this car".[7] The 643 had been a completely clean-sheet design rather than an update of Barnard's Ferrari 640 like the 641 and 642 were.
He later joinedSauber to helpPeter Sauber move into Formula One. In1993 he moved toJordan as chief designer; later in1995 he was back at McLaren as a technical consultant. He assisted McLaren back to the front of the grid and winning the World Championships in1998 and1999.
In2001 he joinedJaguar Racing as technical director.[8] Although his success gave Jaguar their first podium in Monaco, Nichols left Jaguar in early 2002; he has not worked in Formula One since.[9]
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In retirement, Nichols works as a freelance design and technical consultant, based in the United Kingdom; he is also an amateur racing driver, racing aDatsun 260ZX in historic racing events and aVan Diemen RF82 in Historic Formula Ford 2000.[9] In 2017, he founded Nichols Cars to market the N1A, a modern road-going interpretation of theMcLaren M1A race car; the car is expected to reach production in 2022.[10]
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