People

Tino Belli

From an Italian immigrant family, Belli was born in the unlikely setting of the industrial town of Swansea in South Wales. Keen on engineering, he won a place at the celebrated engineering school at Imperial College, London from where he graduated with a first class honors BSc degree in aeronautical engineering in 1981.He worked in the nuclear power industry as a finite element stress engineer for two years before becoming senior aerodynamicist at March Engineering in 1984. He became chief aerodynamicist overseeing a variety of projects including Indycars. Formula 3000, IMSA, Group C and the Oldsmobile closed circuit record car. During the 1987 season he also worked as Michael Andretti's race engineer with the Kraco team. That continued into 1988 but he then became chief development engineer of the Porsche Indycar program. During 1990 he worked briefly at Leyton House Engineering as a senior aerodynamicist before joining forces with Robin Herd to establish Fomet 1. He designed the Fomet Formula 1 car in 1991 and when the company became Larrousse UK Ltd. he did the design work on the Larrousse chassis for the 1992, 1993 and 1994 seasons. When the French team closed down, the operation became Gen Tech UK and provided engineering assistance and aerodynamic work for the Forsythe CART team.In 1995 Tino established his own design consultancy called Cyber Dynamics Ltd. with customers which have included Team Green in CART, Pagan Racing in IRL, TWR Arrows in F1 and Hendrick Motorsport in NASCAR. In recent years his focus has thus been in the United States.