Gordon Murray: The Best Drivers I Ever Worked With

Gordon Murray called the other day. Actually, he connected on Windows Meeting. So there he was, one of, if not the greatest designer in F1 history, mustache, loud shirt and all. His cars had won 50 races and five championships for Brabham and McLaren. His McLaren F1 road car had won Le Mans. And he was happy to talk about anything I wanted to talk about. We started out discussing the T.50 supercar, his latest creation: Cosworth V12 power, all carbon fiber, aluminum and titanium, lightest thing you’ll ever drive and coming to the U.S. in less than a year and a half. You can read that story and see some new photos of the car right here tomorrow afternoon.

But there was more time than I thought I’d get, so I asked about the drivers he’s worked with over a stellar career in F1.

Autoweek: You worked with some of the greatest drivers in history. I would imagine that you saw them as individuals, obviously, so you can’t say which was the greatest because they all did different things better, but which was the greatest?

Gordon Murray: I would have to say Ayrton Senna, because he was the most focused driver I ever worked with. He was absolutely focused. Like I’m focused on light weight, he was focused on driving. And he lived and breathed that. He was quite a religious guy. And quite passionate. Throughout his whole life he was about driving technique and going faster. And he had quite a different technique from a lot of the other drivers I’ve worked with.

Nelson Piquet, he was the one I had the best relationship with. I had a very good relationship with Ayrton, but only for two years, of course. But Nelson Piquet was with the team from Formula Three through for seven years. So he became part of the family and we shared two World Championships together. Of course, I have fond memories of him.

And the other one I really love working with was Niki Lauda. He became a good friend. And very straightforward, very fast, very straightforward, he knew what he wanted, knew what he didn’t like. He was a great character to work with.

AW: You knew where you stood with him.

GM: There was no ambiguity. He liked something or he did not like it. He’d come in (to the pits) and I’d go, “Nikki how’s the car handling?” “The car is shit.” “That’s not terribly helpful, Nikki. Is there grip, is it oversteering, understeering?” “It’s shit!”

AW: What was Alain Prost like?

GM: He was very analytical, too. Actually, there were elements of Alain and Ayrton that they shared. They were both quite analytical. But I think their approach to driving was very different, you know? In qualifying, Alain was probably just as smooth as he was in the racing car. Whereas Ayrton had a completely different qualifying driving style where he was on and off the throttle and you know, attacking every corner as though it was the last corner on the planet.

It is really interesting having had so many drivers drive for me. Yeah, I mean, when I started my very first grand prix, I had to engineer the car, when I was 25 years old, engineer the car for Graham Hill. (laughs) And of course, the first year I worked at Brabham when I was just working on Formula 2, Formula 3, and on details of Formula 1, Jack was still driving. And I got on so well, boy that guy was a gentleman. He was just one of the nicest people you can meet. And quietest and you’d never believe he was, you know, multiple world champion. But when you got him in the car, my goodness, he was really good.

Another good one was Carlos Reutemann. I got on really well with him. Carlos Pace, Wilson Fittipaldi and a lot of Brazilian drivers thinking about it you know, four really good Brazilian drivers.