Keith Duckworth

Keith David Duckworth (born August 10, 1933 in Blackburn , Lancashire , † December 19, 2005 in Northampton ) was a British engineer who was known for the construction of engines in motor racing and was also known as "engine pope".

Life

Duckworth grew up in Blackburn and attended Giggleswick School in North Yorkshire . He did his two years of military service with the Royal Air Force and briefly took part in pilot training, but showed no talent. He then completed an engineering degree at Imperial College London , which he completed in 1955 with a Bachelor of Science .

Duckworth found his first job at Lotus , where he was involved in gearbox development. After three years, he left Lotus and in 1958, together with his colleague Mike Costin, founded a company that developed racing engines. The name of the company was made up of parts of the surnames of the two company founders. “ Cos tin” and “Duck worth ” became Cosworth .

The Cosworth DFV

The Lotus 49 with a Cosworth engine

The close connection to Lotus and Ford , as well as success in the newly founded Formula Junior in the early 1960s, contributed to Cosworth's economic success. The company moved from Barnet to Northampton and Lotus founder Colin Chapman persuaded Ford to fund the production of Duckworth's DFV engine.

Like other manufacturers before him, Chapman wanted to save weight on his racing cars by integrating the engine as a load-bearing part. This construction has been standard in Formula 1 ever since . The DFV made its debut in the third race of the 1967 Formula 1 season in Zandvoort . In a Lotus 49 with a Cosworth engine, Graham Hill took pole position and Jim Clark the race win. From 1968 the DFV was available for purchase by other teams and became the most popular Formula 1 engine in the 1970s. The last team to use the DFV was Tyrrell in the 1985 season .

The successes that the DFV and engines based on it brought in various racing series made Duckworth a wealthy man. In 1980 he sold a large part of his shares in Cosworth for tax reasons, but remained with the company as chairman. Seven years later he gave up the post to Costin for health reasons. After several changes of ownership and divisions of the company since 1980, Cosworth, Cosworth Pi research and Cosworth Racing were sold by Ford to Gerald Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven in 2004 and now operates as the Cosworth Group. The Cosworth Technology division, which was spun off in 1998, is now called Mahle Powertrain and belongs to Mahle .

Duckworth died in 2005 at the age of 72.

Web links

• Memorial Site ( Memento of February 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
• Death report in Project Lemans
• The passing of Keith Duckworth on motorsport.com (engl.)
• Cosworth site (English).