THE FORD COSWORTH STORY

by Steffen Schulz

1 A Summary of the Company`s History

Founder and owner of the Northampton based company for racing engines` technology were the British engineers Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth. The former Lotus employèes had founded Cosworth - the name of the company is taken from parts of their names - in the year 1958. Duckworth had been in the leading position in running the firm.

They had begun with a single engine test stand. Even since 1959 there had been a relationship with the Ford Motor Company. Cosworth designed a light engine for the Ford Anglia. As the consequence Cosworth gave further development to that engine and became very successful in the lower categories like the Formula Junior.

The great boom came in 1967, after Cosworth had been given the order by Ford to construct a small, powerful Formula One normally-aspirated engine for Lotus. Ford had noticed the performance and the successes of the Cosworth designs so far. But the man taking the initiative was Colin Chapman of Lotus, who first took B.R.M. engines as an intermediate solution, but was in the need for a lighter design. At the beginning of the year 1966 Chapman discussed his wishes and ideas with the vicepresident of Ford Europe, Walter Hayes, having a fine dinner. One month later Hayes was able to convince Henry Ford II of the Formula One involvement at their Detroit headquarters and in spite Ford had constructed racing engines of their own in the USA, the Americans did not want to be involved in such an adventure in Europe. A contract was signed with the small but rising British engine company that should construct the engine under their own responsibility, only a few plans were given. The cooperation was not intended only for Formula One but also for other racing categories. The contract came into force on 1st March and 4 points stood in the centre of it. Ford paid the sum of £ 100.000 to Cosworth for the technical development. In return for that Cosworth had to design and to built engines for Formula 1 and Formula 2 under the name of Ford. The F2 engine should have 4 cylinders in a row using that one of the Ford Cortina as it`s base. The Formula 1 engine should be a 90° V8 of 3000 ccm with 4 valves per cylinder and a cylinder head made out of light metal. The engine should be ready for it`s first racing appearance in May 1967. Ford would take over the engine to give it to a team they have chosen. In spite of his company being even at work, Keith Duckworth signed the contract only some months later. I spite of no official statement was given it was clear that Lotus would be the partner of Ford. Lotus signed up with Ford a contract for exclusive delivery of the new V8. The power unit that had been developed by the engineers Keith Duckworth, Mike Costin and Mike Hall had the model designation DFV (Double Four Valves) and the first type was sent to Team Lotus on 25th April 1967, but it gave it`s Grand Prix debut only on 4th June that year in the especially for it designed Lotus 49 chassis. At it`s first start the new engine was able to win it´s first race with Jim Clark in the cockpit of the forward-looking new car and the other competitors were shocked. Children`s deseases of the engine (in Zandvoort Graham Hill being on pole before had to stop because of a broken drive of the camshaft) but above all problems with the filigree car and it`s ZF gearbox caused a lot of retirements. Overall 4 Grand Prix were won in 1967. Officially the engine was named Ford, that was also shown on the cylinderhead covers and the name of Ford was shown on the car. But the car manufacturer was not amused that the people called the engine Ford Cosworth or later simply Cosworth. It took only a short while to make Cosworth the best-known and most successful manufacturer of racing all over the world. The charmingly Cossie named engine won 155 Grand Prix and 22 worldchampionship titles, 10 for the constructors and 12 for the drivers.

In 1980 Duckworth and Costin sold their company to United Engineering Industries and they theirselves sold it to Carlton TV some time later. In 1990 the Vickers Group bought Cosworth. But throughout all the years the cooperation with Ford, having got the rights of the engines and giving the orders for developing new ones , never changed. Meanwhile, in 1993, over 400 persons worked at their Northampton facilities, and the company had become a decisive economic factor in that region.

Throughout the decades of working together with Ford, Cosworth had become their think tank and central supplier for all their racing activities. Outside single-seater Cosworth was responsible for Ford`s involvement in the rally sector. In spite of that they did not work exclusively for the American car manufacturer but als for others like Mercedes and Opel.

During the year 1989 a new generation named HB was itroduced. These ones Ford conidered as works engines. The name Cosworth was not used for them anymore in spite of the fact that Cosworth`s role had not changed. In 1994 the under normal aspects out-dated V8 became world champion, but it must be said that this success only could be reached under the circumstances of the tragic death of Williams Renault driver Ayrton Senna and with the help of Benetton and their driver Michael Schumacher. With the switch back to 3.0 litre engines it was over with the competitiveness for a long while. It was said that the equipment and know how of Cosworth were not at an update level and so it took some time to bring Ford engines made by Cosworth back to the top again. So it lasts until 1997 to introduce CAD to their design office.

In July 1996 Ford renewed their contract with Cosworth and in August 1997, before the Grand Prix of Hungary, a new four year contract was signed in spite of the problems with the present V10 that had been raced since 1996. About 270 people were occupied with the Grand Prix engine.

At the end of 1997 a important development for Cosworth and Ford began. The boss of Vickers, Chris Woodwork, wanted to make his group leaner and therefore he wanted to change the structures of Cosworth, too. Vickers owned the Rolls Royce car company and they decided to sell it. There was also the possibility of Cosworth to be also sold and Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes were interested in buying it. It was pity that Ford was not quick enough to react in this dramatically changing scene on the world`s car market. BMW and Volkswagen gave offers for Rolls Royce and first it seemed to be the Bavarians would make the race, but finally Vickers accepted the offer of Volkswagen in June 1998. Another offer of Volkswagen subsidiary company Audi was made to take charge of Cosworth and Vickers accepted it with the consequence that Audi, and de facto Volkwagen, became the owner over Cosworth before the French Grand Prix in June. Ford`s motorsport centre suddenly was in the hand of their direct rival on the world`s market for road cars! No matter Ford having got the rights of their by Cosworth constructed engines the change in the ownership it meant dramatical consequences for their involvement in motorsport, in spite the contracts between Ford and Cosworth were not touched actually. Sooner or later these contracts would cancelled and many observers believed that Volkswagen wanted to enter the top stage of international motorsports theirselves by buying the Northamton engine shop. Now Volkswagen had access to all the secrets Ford and Cosworth had created in the 3 decades of their partnership because the know how was in the brains of the Cosworth employèes. It seemed to be Ford being completely surprised and paralyzed and no solution for the problem was in sight. First Ford offered some Cosworth technicians to switch to the American company, but there was no possibility to for the direct production of the Grand Prix engines in the Detroit facilities. In the case of the Formula 1 customers`engines (that officially did not exist to be called semi-works ones then) and the Indy Car units an agreement between Ford and Audi was made to transfer the rights to the Germans from 1999 on. The rights for the Ford works engines remained at the Americans.

Until the end of June (the date of the German Grand Prix) Ford worked very hard behind the scenes to clear that difficult situation. Finally they bought that departments of Cosworth from Audi, being specialized only in racing technology and also the American branch. At Audi remained the serial production, the foundry and the engine development. On 15th August 1998 the selling of Cosworth Racing to Ford became perfect and all Cosworth engines continued being called Ford. From this point on Ford was able to be involved directly. The Cosworth headquarters stayed in Northampton, but the factory should be reorganized and modernized. In November 1998 Neil Ressler from Ford, vice president and chief technician for research and development, became chairman of Cosworth. In this era of reorganization Dick Scammel remained managing director on a temporary base.

Now Ford had decided theirselves for a full engagement in motorsport. In January 1999 they bought 51 per cent of Stewart Grand Prix Ltd. having got works engines and additional backing so far. On the 10th June 1999 Ford bought the remaining 49 per cent of the shares to make Stewart a pure works team. With the exception of Ferrari (that means FIAT) Ford was the only car group to run a complete Formula One team of their own, for the moment being managed by Jackie and Paul Stewart. There were rumours that Ford wanted to rename the team into Jaguar and on the 14th September 1999 Ford really announced at the IAA (International Automobil Exhibition) at German Frankfurt on the river Main, Jaguar would be their works team from 2000 on. At the same time the head of Jaguar`s transmission department, Trevor Crisp, was appointed head of Cosworth.

2 The cooperation between Ford and the teams and the use of the high tech potential of the Ford group

The first project had been back in 1959. Costin and Duckworth designed a light engine for the Ford Anglia. Later this engine got further development by Cosworth to turn it into the so-called MAE (Modified Anglia Engine) that entered a lot of racing series to be a very succesful unit. The base for the Formula 2 engine from 1967 on was the four-cylinder of the Ford Cortina. As their common ancestor this engine also had great influence on the design of the DFV Grand Prix engine, because this one was in fact a combination of 2 four-cylinder-engines in the form of a V. With the exception of Ford paying Cosworth for their work to done and giving more or less unspecified plans, the Americans were not involved in the technical processes at Cosworth.

There were some connections to the Ford series production in the shape of special editions of cars like Escort, Sierra and Scorpio Cosworth engines were installed in.

A special method for the casting of aluminum elements called Coscast had been invented and in 1993 Ford adopted this procedure for their series production at their Canadian car plant at Windsor.

It had taken a long time the Cossie to be taken away by other compititors and in 1985 the last one had gone. But with the installation of the 3.5 litre formula in 1987 revised versions came back. For the new generation of engines from 1988 Ford increased their engagement in the project and beside 35 Cosworth engineers 7 of those ones of Ford were working. The age of computers and electronic hag begun with a dramatic development needing full power of all involved. Ford entered the stage with their highly qualified research department with it`s giant resources to produce electronic elements for the works engines. Well-known became the engine management system called EEC - V. During the years 6 men worked in a Ford owned electronic department and about 10 Ford electronic engineers did their jobs in the European and American racing departments to be also present at the circuits.

Additionally the exclusively delivered teams were supported that way and that found it`s climax in the promotion of the Stewart team that later was bought by Ford completely.

In 1993 Ford cooperated with Benetton for developing a traction control. In the same team worked a Ford specialist on the field of chassis dynamics (computer models for the chassis set up) to be himself fully integrated in the racing team. The same also happened at Swiss Sauber team in 1995 and 1996. From December 1995 on Stewart received that service becoming Ford`s works team in fact to give their debut in 1997. They got the greatest support Ford had ever given to a Formula One team. Ford was dissappointed by the years of 1995 and 1996 and reacted self-critical and productive. As a sub-department of Advanced Vehicle Technology Division (AVT) in autumn 1996 Motorsport Technology (MT) was founded with the chief engineers John Valentine and Tyrone Johnson as their heads. By this department Ford wanted to keep their contacts to their partners in motorsport and to givem the possibility to have access to the latest results of research and development especially on the electronic sector, but also on the fields of chassis design and suspension geometrics. For example for the Fly-by-wire system the electronic box constructed by Cambridge based PI Research was fed with a programme of an American Ford specialist. Also aerodynamics could be simulated by computers, the system`s name was CFD (Computer Fluid Dynamics). The integrated system for telemetry and communication by language was made by AVT and MT.

Because of the fact, that Cosworth had lost some of their competitiveness, Ford wanted to intensify their cooperation with the Northampton based engine shop by MT. After all it was a Cosworth product Ford was represented by in motorsport. Cosworth was also able to strengthen their activities by signing up with some former Renault engineers and in their own factory basic support for MT was given by engineer Rainer Wood.

For the year 1999 it is very important to mention the electronic system VCS of the Ford subsidiary Visteon, that takes engine management, suspension management and data recording under the roof of a single electronic box, before there were 4.

3 The way from the V8 to the V10 engine

The beginning of the Cossie was in spring 1966, the year the 3-litre-formula entered the scene. And in spite of the fact that this had been know for a long while a lot of provisinal solutions were seen on the tracks at the beginning of the year, because the Britons had not reacted quick enough. The fear of too high costs for the new formula made Climax retire leaving a great gap. Different engine shops showed different concepts for their 3.0 litre engines. Repco used a serial block for their V8 with a lot of foreign parts in it, Maserati brought a 10-years-old V12 to the tracks, Ferrari and Weslake produced V12s of the present state and B.R.M. created a complicated and very heavy H16.

Based on the plans being fixed in the contract with Ford, to whom Chapman had placed his ideas and wishes according the construction of a new Lotus chassis, the way of Cosworth was absolutely clear. It should be a small, light V8 being used as a part of the structure of the car. Not in reality, but from their idea the V8 consisted of 2 four-cylinder-blocks of the Ford Cortina based Formula 2 engine called FVA standing together in an angle of 90°, and instead of cast steel light metal was used. Bore x stroke were 87.7 x 64.8 mm, so the cubic capacity was 2993 ccm. The engine had got 2 camhafts an 4 valves per cylinder and an ignition made by Lucas. It´s basic power were 400 bhp. The DFV and it`s design were good enough for being in sucessful use not for years, but for decades and were an optimum out of weight, dimensions, power and reliabilty. In spite of different layouts coming on the market often by other manufacturers, mainly V12s, decades later the V10 became the most promising concept. Until that time the V8 was successful. That is the reason why a Cosworth will remain a V8 in history forever.

Colin Chapman was very sad not to renew his contract with Ford on an exclusive base, so in 1968 other teams were able to buy the engine. That year the Cossie was the dominating Grand Prix engine winning 11 of 12 rounds of the worldchampionship.

In 1988, the second year of Formula One returning to normally aspirated engines from the 1.5 litre turbo, so in the last turbopowered year overall, Benetton and Ford decided to bring the 3.5 litre version of the original Cossie to the grid, that had been sold to customer teams in 1987.

The first part of the 1989 Grand Prix season Benetton raced with the modified car of the year before and it took to the French Grand Prix giving the new car it`s debut once, again designed by Rory Byrne and with it`s characteristic air intake on both sides. For the first time this car used a brandnew Ford engine having nothing to do with it`s predecessors from Ford Cosworth and designed for exclusive use of Benetton. This Ford works engine was surrounded by a lot of secrets.

At the end of January 1995 Ford presented the ED version of their V8 at the Birmingham Motorshow. These ED engine is not only the 3.0 litre version of the HB, but also an evolution, because some elements of the Zetec design went into that unit, too. The weight of this 75° V8 with pneumatic valves was 129.5 kgs, had a shorter stroke than the HB and a power of 650 bhp caused by higher revs.

75 of these engines were built of this type to be used by the following customers: Larrousse, Minardi, Simtec, Pacific and Forti. There were also some engines available for Lola for their testing purposes and Team Lotus was also on the list of the Cosworth customer, but they retired. All engines were - in contrast to the years before - nearly of equal quality but the ED was the waekest Formula 1 engine of that season.

In the last but one week of January the Zetec-R-engine was presented at Zürich in Switzerland together with the new Sauber car. This was an extremely modified version from the year for exclusive use of Sauber. In spite of both versions showing good performances on the test stand it must be said that the Zetec R with a cubic capacity of only 3.0 litres simply was too weak. That was the reason why Ford decided to construct a V10 for 1996 like most other successful manufacturers had done. That unit was developed in the record breaking time of only 10 months and had got a lot of light parts made out of titanium, magnesium and carbon fibre. It was a shame that it was forgotten to bring the engine into the step of the car`s floor as it was done by Mercedes-Illmor for McLaren to bring down the centre of gravity.

The most important parts of the engine were produced by Cosworth theirselves or in their Worcester branch (foundry). But the heat treatment was done by foreign companies.

Even at the beginning there were high expectations on the V10 and therefore a lot of pressure on Sauber, too. It was not the first ever by Cosworth designed V10, but the first one that came to the grid. When the rules changed from 3.5 litre to 3.0 litre of cubic capacity Cosworth had a V10 under construction, but this unit was never installed in a car and the project was stopped in the middle of 1994. Before that a V12-project - begun under the pressure from John Barnard from Benetton - had been cancelled.

The first test with the 1996 version of the Zetec R V10 took place on th 6th and 7th October 1995, the unit was lighter and smaller than the V8 Sauber had used the year before.

At the end of 1995 the Forti had declared, they would race the Zetec R V8s in the 1996 season. But nobody of Ford had haerd that before, but they made clear, that they could deliver those engines if the price would be paid for them. Originally the Zetec R V8 should not been available to customers, but hen being in the programme, they were very expensive. The Minardi team had not get the money for them, so they had to take only the old ED version. But Forti signed a contract for the delivery of the Zetec R V8s (the Zetec R V10s were for exclusive use by Sauber and later Stewart) and the money for paying the bills must have come from many smaller sponsors, because after Pedro Diniz had left the team with his personal sponsor parmalat a lot of financial support had been missed.

In 1997 the disappointing engine of 1996 got further development in very shorts steps and therefore the public got the impression of permanent test drives.

In the year 1998 Ford wanted to be successful more than ever before. The last worldchampionship to be won was only 3 years ago, but nobody did realize that, because the title always is identified with Michael Schumacher. Ford intensified their effords and the cooperation with Cosworth. The Americans were very disappointed about the poor appearances in the year before. On the other hand they were concious, that the advantage the competitors had, could not been egalized over night. Also in 1998 they went the hard way when developing and accepted engine blown ups to set things right in the future. They announced their partly withdrawl from other competitions in motorsport to concentrate absolutely on Formula One. To underline that the presentation of the new Stewart Grand Prix car took place in the Ford hall of their centre for research and development on road cars at Dunton near London. 60 Ford employèes were working for the Formula One project in the company`s facilities in Dearnborn/USA and Cologne/Germany and in the Stewart factory in Milton Keynes/England. The new Ford V10, also named Zetec R with the prefix VJ, was produced by Cosworth with the support of the Ford personal once again. The engine was lower and had a better driveability, but it was no new engine. It was a modified version of the unit of the year before. A complete new one was scheduled for 1999.

For that year great hopes were put onto the absolutely new 72° V10 called CR 1 being lighter and smaller than any other Grand Prix engine ever. The electronic engine management operated by a central unit produced by Visteon and until the end of the year Ford wanted to have the same power that Mercedes and Ferrari had. The sessions on the test stand were so promising, that the project boss Hayes compared the Ford engine with those of the leading manufacturers, in spite the CR1 could not run at at high temperatures at it`s beginning. The weight was only 97 kgs instead of the engine used by Minardi having got 130 kgs! And the vibrations the versions before suffered under had been nearly abolished.

4 V10- and V12-projects never to  be raced

In the years 1990 and 1991 the former Benetton designer John Barnard asked Ford for a V12 and the development for such an engine began at Cosworth. But then Barnard switched back to Ferrari (where he soon asked for a V10!) and the V8 HB showed good results. Later the Zetec R-V8 was built and when the technical regulations changed back to a cubic capacity of 3.0 litre in 1995 (instead of 3.5 before) Ford thought a V8 would be better, so they decided to cancel the development of a V10 that meanwhile was under construction.

5 The Ford Cosworth Grand Prix car

At the end of the sixties four-wheel-drive Grand Prix cars entered the scene, but the great expectations they were connected with did not become reality, and so they disappeared again very soon. Theoretically the four-wheel-drive had advantages and many Cosworth customers suffered under a bad driveability of the V8 bringing it´s power to the track only in a small band of revs. To get better traction, Ford and Cosworth decided to construct a car of their own with four-wheel drive, that should be on the grid for the first time for the British Grand Prix in 1969. Robin Herd (former McLaren) and John Thompson did the design and construction work of the car that had a 1967 Ford Cosworth engine,the gearbox directly behind the cockpit and two differentials, brake disc inside the bodywork and, because of the four-wheel-drive, all wheels in the same dimensions. The bodywork looked very futuristic. After secret testing the whole project was cancelled and the original car now is on exhibition in the Donington Grand Prix Collection between Leicester and Derby in the English Midlands.