Mauro Forghieri, the great Ferrari designer of the 1970s and ’80s, has died at the age of 87.
He led work on the cars which brought Italy’s great team back to championship-winning ways in 1975 and continued to win titles into the next decade.
Forghieri was one of the last great designers from the days when a single person was responsible for virtually an entire car end-to-end: chassis, mechanicals, engine, transmission, aerodynamics and all.
His original appointment in charge of Ferrari’s F1 car design came at the age of just 27. The son of Reclus Forghieri, who worked on Enzo Ferrari’s pre-World War Two cars, his education at the University of Bologna was reputedly paid for by Ferrari himself.
Facing a mass walk-out of his engineering staff in 1961, Ferrari appointed Forghieri in place of former designer Carlo Chiti. When F1 increased engine capacities to three litres in 1966, Forghieri’s team was quick out of the blocks with the 312, which won its second race at Spa-Francorchamps in John Surtees’ hands.
At a time when Ferrari’s grand prix team competed with their sports car division for resources, the F1 effort suffered. Just one win followed over the next two seasons, despite Forghieri advancing the team’s design with innovations such as trend-setting an adjustable wing.
He was relocated away from the F1 effort in 1969, but the team’s form plummeted, and the following year he was back. Forghieri’s latest design, the flat-12 312B1, scored three wins at the end of the season, though it was too late for driver Jacky Ickx to take the title away from Jochen Rindt, who had died in a crash at Monza.
After a 1971 season beset by mechanical niggles and the frosty reception afforded to Forghieri’s unorthodox 312B3 ‘Spazzaneve’ (‘snowplough’) design, he found himself moved aside once more. But again, Ferrari found themselves in the doldrums the following year, and he was soon back.
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This time Ferrari had realised more fundamental change was needed. The young Luca di Montezemolo was appointed to run the team, and along with Forghieri’s reinstatement Niki Lauda was brought into the fold. Forghieri seized on Lauda’s unflinchingly frank assessment of his car’s shortcomings and together they rapidly brought Ferrari back to the front
The 1974 season was a breakthrough year for Ferrari….
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