People

Keith Duckworth

Educated at Giggleswick School in Yorkshire, Duckworth studied at Imperial College in London after completing his National Service with the Royal Air Force. In 1956 he became a gearbox designer with Lotus and then in 1958 joined forces with Mike Costin to establish a company which they decided to call Cosworth. The company's first job was to develop parts for Ford road car engines but in the autumn of 1965 Cosworth was commissioned to build two racing engines for Ford: a 1.6-liter Formula 2 unit and a 3-liter Formula 1 V8. The result was the FVA and the DFV.The DFV won on its debut in Holland in June 1967 and went on to become the mainstay of Grand Prix racing in the 1970s, providing the small British teams with a cheap and reliable engine package. The DFV and its derivatives won 154 Grand Prix victories (the last victory being in Las Vegas in 1982).In the mid-1970s Cosworth engineers developed the DFX for Indycar racing, using the DFV as a base for the turbocharged unit. The DFX dominated Indycar racing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, scoring 81 consecutive victories at one point. The company also produced the Ford BDA for F2 although this was later used to great effect by the Ford rallying teams.The success was such that Cosworth made big profits and Duckworth and Costin sold the company. It continued to produce racing engines throughout the 1980s and 1990s and was eventually bought by the Ford Motor Company in 1999.