Steve Nichols

Stephen Anderson Nichols (born 20 February 1947 in Salt Lake City, Utah)^[1] is an American engineer who is best known as a car designer for many Formula One teams from the mid-1980s until 2001.

After saving up enough pocket money to buy himself a go-kart to go racing around his local streets when he was 14, his parents feared he would have a bad accident with a real motor car on the streets and instead bought him a racing go-kart to drive on the local track, not realizing that Steve would actually get interested in motorsport as a result. And it was after seeing an article in Road & Track magazine about "Chapman's Tubeless Wonder" (the Lotus 25) in 1962, that Nichols decided he wanted to be a Formula One car designer and from then on (aged 15) he tailored his education towards engineering and achieving his goal.

Nichols graduated from the

In 1982, Nichols became the race engineer for Niki Lauda and remained so until Lauda's retirement after 1985. This included being Lauda's engineer during his 3rd and final World Championship winning season in 1984 while having to overcome a faster and younger new team mate in Alain Prost (Lauda won by the smallest margin in F1 history, just 0.5 points). Following Lauda's retirement, Nichols became race engineer for 1982 World Champion Keke Rosberg in 1986 and former Ferrari driver Stefan Johansson in 1987.

In late 1986 following the departure of John Barnard to Ferrari, team owner Ron Dennis named Nichols as the Chief Designer for both the 1987 and 1988 turbo cars, while Nichols also continued as one of the two race engineers within the team.

His first car, the

Nichols' second car was the highly successful

During the season, Mclaren also scored a record ten 1-2 finishes from the seasons 16 races.

While some articles give credit to Gordon Murray for the MP4/4's design and claim that it was based on Murray's earlier Brabham BT55 for the 1986 season, many at McLaren, including former team manager Jo Ramírez and a number of McLaren's design office including Matthew Jeffreys and Alan Jenkins, have pointed out that the MP4/4 was a development of the MP4/3 and that Murray, who became McLaren's Technical Director in 1987, had very little to do with the design of either of Nichols' cars. Commenting on the differences of the BT55 and MP4/4, Nichols remarked:

The only similarity is that they were both low. But if you look at anything else – the rules were different [and therefore] the fuel tank size was different, the drivetrain was different, different engine, different gearbox – everything.^[3]

Senior design engineer Matthew Jeffreys who was in charge of the front monocoque and suspension design for the MP4/4, also refuted Murray's claims of the BT55 being the basis of the MP4/4: "None of us were looking at BT55 drawings and we wouldn't have wanted to be either – it was a disaster. Why would we want a McLaren to have copied a car that had huge problems and was also two years old?" Nichols suggested that Murray claimed credit for the MP4/4 in the hopes that its reputation would overshadow that of the BT55's engine and gearbox issues:

Gordon had the Brabham BT55, which was by any standard a terrible car. He’s got that blot on his copy book. So now I think he feels the need to claim credit for the MP4/4, to expunge the BT55 off his record.^[3]

Murray denied Nichols' involvement in the MP4/4's development, stating in an interview with

At the end of 1989, Alain Prost asked Nichols to join him at Ferrari in 1990 despite that in their 6 seasons together at McLaren (1984-89), Nichols had actually been the race engineer for each of Prost's team mates, including winning World Championships with Niki Lauda in 1984 and Ayrton Senna in 1988.

In 1990, Ferrari used the V12 powered Ferrari 641 which was a development of another revolutionary John Barnard design, the Ferrari 640 from 1989 (it was revolutionary in that instead of the usual manual transmission, the Ferrari had a then new for F1 Semi-automatic transmission). By the time Prost and Nichols arrived at Ferrari, John Barnard had left to begin work with the Benetton team.

Prost won five races and was a serious contender for the 1990 world title until a controversial collision triggered by Ayrton Senna put both drivers out of the race at the

In 2001 he joined Jaguar Racing as technical director.^[6] Although his success gave Jaguar their first podium in Monaco, Nichols left Jaguar in early 2002; he has not worked in Formula One since.^[7]

In retirement, Nichols works as a freelance design and technical consultant, based in the United Kingdom; he is also an amateur racing driver, racing a

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