Steve Nichols
The Formula 1 engineer was confidant to Senna and Prost, and helped to orchestrate their career highs. What next?
Not oNly did Steve Nichols play a key role in introducing carbonfibre to Formula 1, he was also chief designer of a car that won 15 of its 16 races, race engineer to Ayrton Senna, and moved from McLaren to Ferrari at the request of Alain Prost. And yet he arrives for our interview laden with our photographer’s gear, having volunteered to carry it across the wet car park.
The affable American could have carved out a career for himself on home soil but, while his friends were into Indycar or NASCAR, early outings at the local kart track gave him an appreciation of roadracing. After seeing a 1962 article in Road &
Track about ‘Chapman’s tubeless wonder’ – the Lotus 25 – his mind was made up: he wanted to become a Formula 1 designer.
Nichols gained a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Utah, then got a job with Hercules and worked on rocket motors for Trident missiles. His time there gave him invaluable experience of composite materials, but weapons weren’t motor sport. After four years he joined shock-absorber company Gabriel, which was looking for an engineer to design dampers for Indycars.
‘It was quite specialist but it was a way into motor racing,’ he remembers. ‘It was dominated by Monroe at the time and they provided a very basic damper. We came along with a different approach, where we designed a bespoke racing damper.’
It wasn’t immediately accepted – ‘Nobody in Indycar thought the dampers did anything’ – but the breakthrough came during testing at Indianapolis with Al Unser, who was struggling with his car’s handling until he tried Nichols’ dampers. After that, they turned up on more and more cars, including John Barnard’s Chaparral.
By 1980, Barnard had moved to Ron Dennis’s Project 4 team and Nichols called him that summer, ostensibly to see if there were any jobs going. Barnard mentioned that he was looking at alternative materials in order to create a skinny but stiff monocoque – Nichols immediately guessed that he meant carbonfibre, and Barnard admitted that they couldn’t find anyone who could make it for them. Nichols put him in touch with his former employers at Hercules, and the rest is history.
Later that year, Nichols came on board full-time when Project 4 merged with McLaren. John Barnard’s revolutionary carbonfibre monocoque became the basis for the 1981 MP4/1, and any doubts about its suitability were soon dispelled.
‘Andrea [de Cesaris] crashed 73 times or something,’ says Nichols with a smile. ‘The original monocoque was brutally stiff, so much so that, on the second car, we cut the basic lay-up in half. Andrea was always in the original brick shit-house and did his best to destroy it, and we kept repairing it. He’d be asking for a new monocoque and we’d be saying, “No, we think you’re alright with that one…”’
Niki Lauda came on board for 1982, and over the course of the next two seasons he and John Watson won five races. Everything really clicked into place for 1984, when Alain Prost replaced Watson, and Porsche’s TAG-funded turbo engine superseded the venerable Cosworth. The team won 12 races, Lauda pipping Prost to the title.
‘Prost was perfect,’ says Nichols. ‘Blindingly fast and just a regular guy. At Spa in 1985, I walked down to Eau Rouge, showed my pass and got right down there. Mansell comes through, hands a blur, shower of sparks – wow! Prost comes out, whistles through slowly on his out lap, then comes through slowly again. I thought he must have a problem. He comes through slow again, then doesn’t reappear. I wandered back up to the pits to see what was going on, and he was on pole! You couldn’t tell the difference – out lap, fast lap, in lap. No drama.’
Prost went on to win his first title that year. In 1986, and with Lauda having retired, Keke Rosberg joined the team, but the Finn initially struggled with the inherently understeering McLaren. As his race engineer, Nichols took a different approach from Barnard, who expected the driver to adapt to the car rather than vice versa.
‘Keke wanted a car that had a lot of oversteer and he complained to John all the time about understeer. He’d say to me, “Honestly, Steve – I’m not a wanker!” I really like Keke, I’ve got a lot of time for him, but mid-season John just washed his hands of it and said “Do what you like”.’
The radical solution for the German Grand Prix involved relocating the Gurney flap from the top edge of the rear wing to the
‘AndreA de cesAris crAshed 73 times or so. he’d Ask for A new monocoque And we’d sAy “no, you’re Alright”’