Ciao Mauro - The Maximum Engineer

This week we saw the sad news that Mauro Forghieri had passed away at age 87.

For many he is a well known super-power of automobile design, especially in F1 circles. 

For others they perhaps saw the news and were not sure who this man was.

Here at the Dirty Side we wanted to take a look at the career of someone regarded as one of Formula 1's greatest engineering geniuses.

He was unique insofar as he designed not only engines but also the chassis and gearboxes.  

Many designers focus on one discipline but Mauro was a unique individual with a head full of ideas.

The story starts back in the late 1950s where a 24 year old Mauro took a role in Ferrari.

He had done an internship in 1957 but had really been wanting to pursue a career in aviation. 

In fact he had considered moving to California to pursue a role for a company making aircraft turbine engines.

The story goes that Enzo himself played a part in persuading Mauro to move to Ferrari and, regardless of whether that is true or not, he found himself in Maranello.

Mauro & Enzo

In 1960 he would team up with Gian Paolo Dallara (The future founder of Dallara Automobili) who also joined Ferrari at around the same time.  

The pair were surrounded by many great mentors from Ferrari's early days but his real defining moment would come a year later in 1961 when some of those same people decided enough was enough as tensions with Enzo and his methods boiled over.

Things came to a head in 1961 and many people left the organization in what is referred to as the "Great Walkout". Chief Designer Carlos Chiti and a number of those ousted formed a new company, ATS.

Many predicted the downfall of Ferrari as these key resources left a huge hole in the organization.

At this time the development of the Ferrari 250 GTO was in a critical phase.  The car had been hoped to ward off the challenge of the Jaguar E-type.

With the chassis and styling still incomplete the project looked in ruins.

It was at this point that Mauro and a long-time racing bodywork designer, Sergio Scaglietti, entered the fray.

At just 27 years of age he was thrust into the role of Technical Director.

The 250 GTO

Mauro honed the chassis and, with Phil Hill and Olivier Gendebien driving, the car secured first in class at the 12 Hours of Sebring.  It brushed aside the Jaguar challenge throughout 1962 and went down in history as one of the most famous endurance sports cars of all time.

Around 1963 his skills were deployed over on the F1 side of the shop.  

As well as getting to work designing the car, he also persuaded Ferrari to hire British driver John Surtees.  

The Ferrari 158

With Surtees behind the wheel of the Forghieri-designed Ferrari 158 they secured both the Drivers & Constructors titles in 1964.

Not a man to be focused on just one project at a time, while the F1 team was having success, he also presided over designs for Le Mans with the 250P,  275P and 250 LM.

Le Mans 250P

If that wasn't enough, he was also working on maybe the greatest Ferrari competition car of all time in the 330P which won the Daytona 24-hours.

It also happens to be an absolutely stunning car to look at!

The Daytona winning 330P

Innovation was always at the forefront of his thinking and this was shown to the world when, in 1968 at Spa, he fitted a rear wing to an F1 car for the first time.  

Pole position was secured with a time four seconds quicker than that of Jackie Stewart.

The 312 F-158 with it's wing

Ferrari's fortunes were a little up and down for a while in F1, but then his 312T complete with transverse gearbox, flat-12 engine, and striking looking design took Niki Lauda to the title in 1975.  

Lauda's 312T

This was a feat repeated in 1977 for Lauda and then the latest Forghieri-designed car gave Jody Scheckter the title in 1979.

Forghieri & Scheckter

A change in regulations saw ground effect come into play and, as the design blocked the Venturi tunnels under the car, the days of the flat-12 engine were over.  

Not to be outdone, he designed the first turbo-charged Ferrari and they became the first team to win the constructors with such an engine in 1982.

Turbo thumbs up from Mauro

All in all, he presided over 54 grand prix wins, four drivers titles, and eight constructor titles for Ferrari during his time in their F1 division.

In 1987 his time at Ferrari came to an end and he joined Lamborghini who wanted an F1 engine as a strategy to help sell their supercars.

Mauro worked to design a normally-aspirated V12 engine which would power the new 3.5-litre formula which came into force for 1989.

Lambo powered Lola

It would power a Lola and, while it showed signs of potential, the best result was a sixth placed finish in the Spanish GP.

The Lamborghini F1 project never really took off and despite the excitement when Ayrton Senna tested the engine for McLaren it did not continue and the company retired it's engines from F1 in 1993.

From here he went on to design an electric minivan for Enel, and was appointed technical director of Bugatti Automobili, where he developed the EB110 and 112 models. 

Bugatti EB110

He then left to found Oral Engineering in Modena with Franco Antoniazzi and Sergio Lugli early in 1995. 

His work there embraced the design, research and development of automobile, motorcycle, marine and go-kart engines.  

Later, he was chief engineer in the mid-2000s on the Project 1221 MF1 (Yep, it sported his initials) sports car which got dubbed as the greatest sports car never to exist.  

This was a top secret project to develop a car powered by a Williams zero-emissions gas turbine engine.  

Not a lot of info exists on the web and there are no real renders of the car beyond some dodgy looking clay models and some drawings done in MS Paint which we are not even sure are legit!

After the news of his death broke there was a unanimous outpouring of a sense of loss to the sport.  There were not many like him and maybe never will be again in terms of the all round involvement with design.

We looked at many of the quotes out there but this was one of our favorites.  It's from Gian Paolo Dallara, now head of the Dallara racing, who began his apprenticeship at Ferrari in 1960 alongside Forghieri. 

He said of his former colleague:

"Forghieri is the most complete designer ever existed. There are plenty of designers but he made engines also, all kinds of engines, and then he made Formula 1, Formula 2, and then the endurance races and even uphill races, and he competed with Porsche. 

The Maximum."

RIP Mauro