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Simon Arkless

Formula 1 mechanics assemble and disassemble Grand Prix cars but there are a lot of engineers who flit from team to team, looking after specific parts of the car: there are electronics men from the different companies involved; there are gearbox men from X-Trac; there are brake men from Brembo, AP and Carbone Industrie and there is Simon Arkless, the spark plug man from Champion.

Champion supplies the spark plugs for all Renault and Ford engines and so Arkless is constantly flitting between the many teams in his care. Constantly checking spark plugs is a vital task because when one is an F1 technical supplier one gets very little recognition when a car wins a race. One never sees the headline "Champion helps Williams to another race win" but if there is a problem the supplier often gets the blame. It is a no win situation unless there are never failures.

Arkless himself has been around racing for over 30 years. From Birmingham, he became an apprentice with the British Motor Corporation at the age of 18 and was a part-time racer himself throughout the 1960s. In 1968 he began working as a full-time racing mechanic with fellow Midlander Alan Rollinson in a Chevron. He went on to work with Rollinson in F2 and ultimately in Formula 5000.

In 1970 he was recruited by Morris Nunn to be chief mechanic with a new Midlands-based racing team called Ensign. This ran Bev Bond with some success in 1971 and a couple of chassis were sold to customers, notably to David Purley's Lec Refrigeration team. Mike Walker replaced Bond at mid-season and for the 1972 season Nunn recruited Dutchman Rikky von Opel to be Walker's team-mate. Both drivers won races and customer Colin Vandervell was also successful. Von Opel then asked Ensign to build him a Formula 1 car for 1973, which made its debut in the 1973 French GP.

Arkless would leave Ensign at the end of that year, having been offered a job as F1 engineer for Coventry-based AP Racing, to look after brakes, clutches and other componentry. He would remain with AP for the next 10 years before being offered the job at Champion in 1983.