People

Ben Wood

The son of David Wood, a well known motor racing engineer who in recent years has worked with Austin Rover, Cosworth and as a consultant engineer - Ben studied mechanical engineering at Exeter University in England. He graduated with a Masters degree in 1993, at the time when his father was working as a Ford race engineer with Minardi. It was therfore no surprise when he was hired to work in the small aerodynamic department at Minardi under technical director Aldo Costa.

He stayed at Minardi until the end of 1995 but then followed Costa to Ferrari, where he was involved in the development of the Ferrari F1 cars in the half-scale Maranello windtunnel. He was then lured back to Britain to work for Mike Gascoyne's aerodynamic team at Tyrrell and it was while he was with the Ockham team that Wood first made a big impact in F1 by coming up with the X-wing concept.

These wings were widely copied by other F1 teams and eventually the concept was banned by the FIA. In the autumn of 1987 both John Barnard at Arrows and Alain Prost were trying to hire Wood away from Tyrrell. In the end Prost offered to make him head of the Prost aerodynamic team and he chose to move to France.

He split his time between the team's headquarters at Guyancourt and at the Prost windtunnel in Magny-Cours and the new Prost-Peugeot AP02 showed signs of innovative aerodynamics with its unusual sidepod profiles.

At the end of the 1999 season Wood returned to Britain, joining Gary Anderson's aerodynamics team at the new Jaguar Racing. He has since departed Jaguar.