People

Peter Windsor-Smith

Windsor-Smith became an apprentice with the aviation Armstrong Siddeley after leaving school and he worked there until 1943 when he moved to join the elite Ricardo Consulting Engineers company at Shoreham in Sussex. This led to a job as a diesel development engineer with Daimler in Coventry in 1950. In 1954 the Coventry Climax company wanted to expand its diesel operations and Windsor-Smith moved to the firm to work as a development engineer. At the time the company was experimenting with lighweight engines developed from a fire pump. The engine had not been designed with racing in mind as its capacity was rather too small but Windsor-Smith worked with Walter Hassan and Harry Mundy to design the 1.5-litre V8 Formula 1 engine, which became the dominant engine in F1 for a period. Jaguar took over Coventry Climax in 1965 and immediately announced that it was stopping the racing programme. Windsor-Smith was moved to the development of engines for buses, which was not quite as exciting and in 1970 he returned with racing as an engineer with BRM, developing the firm's V12 engines in the 1970s, a campaign which resulted in wins for Pedro Rodriguez, Jo Siffert, Peter Gethin and Jean-Pierre Beltoise.