Neil Oatley

Neil Oatley (born June 12, 1954 ) is a British engineer and racing car designer in Formula 1 .

Oatley studied automotive engineering at Loughborough University . After graduating in 1976, he worked briefly at Consine Dynamics before he was poached by Williams in late 1977 to work alongside Patrick Head and Frank Dernie on the development of the racing cars. Oatley stayed with Williams for seven years, during which time he was the race engineer for Clay Regazzoni ( 1979 ), Carlos Reutemann ( 1980 and 1981 ) and Jacques Laffite .

At the end of 1984, Carl Haas brought Oatley into the development department of his new Beatrice Lola team as a partner of John Baldwin . After the team's early demise in November 1986, Oatley joined John Barnard at McLaren . In 1987 Barnard went to Ferrari and was replaced by Gordon Murray , under whom Steve Nichols developed the McLaren MP4 / 4 for 1988 , which won 15 of 16 races. After Murray moved to McLaren Automotive , Oatley was given responsibility for the development of the McLaren MP4 / 5 for the 1989 season. He remained design chief until he moved to the post of managing director in 2003 and Mike Coughlan took over the design department. Alain Prost ( 1989 ), Ayrton Senna ( 1990 and 1991 ) and Mika Häkkinen ( 1998 and 1999 ) won the world championship in Oatley's car .

Web links

• Statistics of Formula 1 cars designed by Oatley