Rory Byrne
Rory Byrne (born January 10, 1944 in Pretoria , South Africa ) is a South African designer of racing cars. He worked for a long time for the Formula 1 teams Benetton and Ferrari , where he designed all the cars in which Michael Schumacher became world champion.
After moving to Ferrari in 1997, Byrne designed Monoposti , with which over 75 Grand Prix, six first places in the constructors 'championship and five drivers' titles could be won. With the Benetton B194 and B195 models he created, he already achieved two drivers and one manufacturer titles. This outstanding record made Byrne the most successful vehicle designer in Formula 1 from 2003 to 2011, with his “rival” Adrian Newey being both predecessor and successor in this category.
Early career: Formula Ford and Formula 2
Byrne already was interested in at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg for the motor sports ; initially as a driver, later exclusively for the technical aspects of the sport. After graduating in 1965 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry and applied mathematics , he worked as a chemist . However, he retained his fascination for racing until the late 1960s when he and two friends founded a company that imported tuning parts to South Africa.
During this phase he designed racing cars for the first time and applied his mathematical and physical knowledge, although he lacked a classical engineering education. His first car, a Formula Ford , was competitive and did well in the 1972 South African Championship.
Spurred on by this success, Byrne moved to England that year to try a career as a racing car designer.
He bought an older Royale Formula Ford and used all his skills to improve it. He received an unexpected career boost when Bob King, founder of Royale Racing, sold his team in 1973. The new owner was looking for an engineer to replace King, who had designed the vehicles himself. He hired Byrne, who designed Formula Ford vehicles for Royal and its customers for the next four years.
When Byrne Ted Toleman was introduced in 1977, the next step in his career opened up for the then 33-year-old engineer, who was already an established figure in British motorsport. The multi-million dollar haulage entrepreneur Toleman was the owner of a Formula 2 team at the time and hired Byrne as its designer. After several years of remarkable results, the joint work culminated in 1980 with first and second place with Brian Henton and Derek Warwick in the European Formula 2 championship. From now on, Toleman saw his destiny in Formula 1 .
formula 1
Toleman
The first vehicle designed by Byrne in Formula 1 was the Hart- powered TG181. Since Toleman Motorsport was not yet able to pay for the transport to the overseas races, it first started at the San Marino Grand Prix in the 1981 Formula 1 season .
Two seasons passed before the team took any points. During the 1983 Formula 1 season , Derek Warwick and Bruno Giacomelli scored ten points, which gave Toleman ninth place in the manufacturers' championship. From that point on, the name Byrnes was on the scene. While the vehicles he designed looked quite bulky at the time, their aerodynamic details were very effective. Significantly, the next step in his career resulted from the commitment of the “high-flyer” from the British Formula Ford for 1984: Ayrton Senna . Senna was best able to compensate for the pitfalls of the engine , which sometimes started with brute force in turbo times, with metered throttle strokes. At the 1984 rain race in Monaco , Senna reduced the gap to leading Alain Prost on McLaren-TAG with the TG184 on every lap and was 7 seconds behind when race director Jacky Ickx stopped the race prematurely.
A race win was on the horizon, but the realities were different. The chronic underfunding would have hampered the careers of all involved had it not been for the Benetton family approaching Toleman with serious purchase plans.
Benetton
In the now formed Benetton team , Byrne had significantly more financial and other resources at their disposal. With the BMW turbo four-cylinder one now had one of the most powerful engines. Nevertheless, it was not until October 1986 that Gerhard Berger clinched his first victory for himself, the team and above all for Rory Byrne at the end of the 1986 Formula 1 season at the Mexican Grand Prix .
Over the next five years, the racing cars designed by Byrne won another four Grand Awards. However, Benetton was never able to seriously challenge the top teams Williams , McLaren and Ferrari at that time.
After a brief interlude in the prematurely canceled Formula 1 project of chassis manufacturer Reynard , Byrne returned to Benetton in 1992 to find it in a different form thanks to the new team boss Flavio Briatore and the up-and-coming driver Michael Schumacher : Briatore had from the former “party racing stable” now formed a purposeful troop who only lacked success. Byrne improved the previous year's car in all technical aspects: semi-automatic transmission , all-wheel steering , active chassis and traction control . The all-wheel steering in particular turned out to be an expensive "construction site" that did not bring the desired success. A single victory in Estoril was not enough to meet the demands of the team, which registered in time that the ban on all-wheel steering and active chassis for the 1994 Formula 1 season would reshuffle the cards.
Already in the first two races of the season it became clear that you had to beat both Byrnes B194 and Schumacher to achieve a victory. Byrne had consistently designed a vehicle that matched the driving style of his top driver, optimized the horsepower disadvantage of the Ford engine with regard to drivability and saw the "loss" of the technical aids of previous years as an opportunity. During the course of the season it emerged that he was using a sophisticated system of pressure pumps to shift the center of gravity of the fuel masses to the most favorable position for the vehicle. Although critics suggested that this success was due to unusually sloppy work at his rival Newey at Williams and unproven manipulation, at least the driver's title confirmed Byrne's typical motto " Evolution not a revolution " and laid the foundation for 1995.
For the 1995 Formula 1 season , Renault was now an engine partner instead of Ford. The B195 was no longer the ingenious design like the previous year's model, but thanks to Michael Schumacher and Johnny Herbert they won both the driver and manufacturer title, with which Byrne himself had reached the first high point of his career.
After Schumacher switched to Ferrari, Benetton's team structure began to break up. Since he had to assume now to have the zenith of his work behind him, announced his resignation Byrne at the end of 1996. With his Thai wife Pornthip, with whom he has been married since 1998, he proposed on the island of Ko Lanta in Thailand a Founding a diving school and wanted to pursue his fishing hobby more.
Ferrari
During the 1996 Formula 1 season, it became clear that neither Schumacher nor team boss Jean Todt could work with the previous designer, John Barnard , in the long term . His designs were too conservative, and he himself was too inflexible when it came to improving the defects. In addition, Barnard resisted all attempts to convince him to move to Italy for better coordination and to have his own wind tunnel decisively calibrated. The broken management structure had paralyzed the decision-making processes several times. The data from his wind tunnel could not be transferred to the real vehicle.
Schumacher and Todt therefore set about “recruiting” as many former team members from the old Benetton squad as possible. The most important building blocks were Benetton's technical director, Ross Brawn , and Rory Byrne.
After much hesitation, Byrne also signed with Ferrari and moved from early retirement to Maranello , where he set up a design office, had a contemporary wind tunnel designed and involved other designers such as initially Gustav Brunner and later Nikolas Tombazis . The cars he designed were able to compete in the world championship as early as the 1997 Formula 1 season , from 1999 they caught up with their opponents, and from 2000 to 2005 it was his cars that had to be beaten. Over the years he remained true to his principle of “evolution not revolution”; each of his vehicles was based in essential parts on the previous year's model. Together with his staff and Ross Brawn, Byrne designed several different concepts in order to safely and consistently score points at the beginning of each season. For example, in some years the company started with an only slightly modified model from the previous year, only to present the new chassis at the races in Europe . On the other hand, with a considerable lead in points in the world championship, the further development of the current model with the exception of aerodynamic retouches was prematurely stopped so that one could concentrate fully on next year's model.
The last Ferrari designed exclusively by him was that of the 2004 season . The successor model had already been largely co-designed by his designated successor, Aldo Costa , who had been lured away from Minardi at his instigation . In 2004 he announced his withdrawal from Formula 1 for 2006. From now on, Byrne withdrew more and more to compensate for the car's deficiencies during the problem phase in 2005 and to work on the next model.
After the tsunami disaster in late 2004, the Ferrari community briefly feared that both Byrne and his wife on Ko Lanta and Ferrari team boss Todt, who was in Malaysia with his girlfriend Michelle Yeoh , would be affected. However, like the Byrnes house, they remained intact.
On September 19, 2006, Byrne announced to the press that he would be a technical advisor to Scuderia Ferrari for another two years until February 2009. He assessed the future of Ferrari as well prepared: “The 2004 car was the last I was responsible for, but this year we saw a car driving that was just as competitive, that ran just as well and reliably. We have made the transition to put my responsibility in the hands of Aldo and Nicholas. "
Rory Byrne was once again engaged by Ferrari as a consultant for the development of the 2017 F1 racing car, the SF70H . The successes achieved in the first three Grands Prix of the 2017 season are also seen in connection with this.
Honors
In November 2005, the aforementioned Wits University in South Africa honored him with an honorary doctorate in engineering because, thanks to his excellent work, he had put his homeland in a good light.
Private
Rory Byrne has a child with his wife Pornthip. He gave up the plans for a diving school due to lack of time, as he would like to devote himself to raising his son in his later retirement. However, he has acquired a plot of land on one of the beaches in Phuket in order to be able to build a house there in the medium term.
Web links
- Rory Byrne . In: grandprix.com (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rory Byrne has an Irish ID card . See: www.auto-motor-und-sport.de ( Memento of the original of February 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ cf. Note 1 ( Memento of the original dated February 27, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ www.motorsport-total.com
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ www.motorsport-total.com
- ↑ www.f1total.com - September 18, 2006
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Byrne, Rory |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | South African designer of racing cars |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 10, 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Pretoria |