Steve Nichols

Steve Nichols ( born February 20, 1947 in Salt Lake City, Utah ) is an American engineer and a former designer of racing cars in Formula 1

Nichols studied at the University of Utah mechanical engineering. After graduating in 1972, he worked for four years at Hercules Inc., where he gained experience with the then-new carbon -fiber composites. In 1976, he joined the company Gabriel, produced the shock absorbers for Indycars. In the course of these activities, he met John Barnard know who designed race car for Parnelli and chaparral at this time. Barnard and Nichols exchanged views on the use of composite materials in the construction of racing cars. As Barnard in 1980 brought by Ron Dennis to the Project 4 team, he recruited shortly thereafter Nichols on to work together at the MP4 / 1.

Project 4 took a short time later McLaren and the design team at Barnard, Nichols, Alan Jenkins, Neil Oatley, Tim Wright and Gordon Kimball developed driven by the TAG - Porsche cars in which Alain Prost and Niki Lauda three drivers and two constructors' title could bring.

After Barnard's move to Ferrari in late 1986 Nichols took over with Gordon Murray, the development of the MP4 / 4, the first McLaren with Honda engine with Ayrton Senna and Prost won 15 of 16 races in 1988. End of the season there were tensions between Dennis and Nichols and he went to Ferrari in January 1989, where he replaced Barnard, who had moved on to Benetton as design chief.

Together with the aerodynamicist Jean -Claude Migeot Nichols developed the Ferrari F92A, which could not, however, enter the desired results. Nichols moved to Sauber, where he designed the Sauber C13 Ilmor. In 1993, he was not involved in racing and in 1994 hired only for a few months in Jordan.

In July 1995, Nichols returned to McLaren and took a job at McLaren Automotive, where he worked not only for Formula 1, but was also involved in other projects. He replaced the end of 2000 Gary Anderson as technical director at Jaguar, but the Jaguar R3 developed under his direction was unsuccessful and he left the team in early 2002.

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