He spent the best part of 30 years trying to make racing cars go faster, then the next quarter of a century striving to make them safer. But Peter Wright, who died in November aged 79, was an understated figure who never sought the limelight despite being one of the most influential R&D motor sport engineers of his generation. We visited him at his home in July just four months before his untimely death.

Ostensibly we were going to talk to him about his recent book – How Did I Get Here? – but also to mine first-hand memories from a genuine polymath: his immense contribution to Lotus, for whom he shaped ground-effect aerodynamics in the 1970s, then pioneered active suspension in the 1980s, and his second racing life as a classic ‘poacher-turned-gamekeeper’ at the FIA which made him a key influencer on the modern drive for improved safety.

What we found was a man grappling with squaring the circle as he reflected on a long and fruitful life dedicated to motor sport, in a world for which he now feared.

Tributes poured in after his death was announced on November 6: the FIA called him “pioneering”; Mark Hughes dubbed him the “father of F1 ground effects”; Damon Hill said he “exuded genius”. As it turned out, this interview has become ours.

After spending his FIA years living in France’s Dordogne, Wright was living cheerfully off-grid in a stunning barn conversion on the English-Welsh border in Herefordshire, with his third wife Dorothy, when we paid our visit. Like so many high-achievers in racing, ‘retirement’ wasn’t really part of his lexicon. Recent projects included stability control research for e-scooters, while for indulgence he maintained a suitably off-centre trio of classics: a recreation of a GN Akela raced at Brooklands by Ivy Cummins, a replica Jaguar C-type – “One of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful racing car ever made” – and a bright red Mark II. Life also revolved heavily around sustaining his off-grid existence. In the basement, Peter showed us the hefty pack of a dozen 4V batteries upon which he and Dorothy relied. Power was supplied mostly via solar panels, plus a 2.5kW wind turbine, with water flowing from a spring in a corner of the half-acre site.

“For me, safety was as interesting as making cars go quicker”

Another side project had been his memoir, self-published and entitled How Did I Get Here?: Memories of Six Decades in Motorsport, and Musings on the Future of Formula 1 and the Planet. As you’ll gather from that, it’s a wide-ranging tale from a genuine free-thinker and spirit who experienced his fair share of upheaval and personal trauma on the racer’s road. No wonder then that, having graciously accepted our request to pay a visit to his quirky home in this delightfully bucolic corner of the UK, our conversation with Peter turned out to be far from one-dimensional.

We began by discussing his vocation for sustainable living. He was quick to accept the contradiction of having dedicated most of his life to a sport centred on burning fossil fuels, but it didn’t affect his quiet determination to address the reality of climate change – “I happen to believe in scientists” – especially as the challenges of living off-grid stimulated his engineering instincts. “There’s a 99.99% consensus, so you would be wise to take notice of the scientists,” he said. “I couldn’t see any reason why they are wrong. So what do you do about it? The answer is, I suppose, there’s not much I can do. But at least one can live sustainably and also it’s interesting to do so. So I thought, why not?”

The final chapters of his book are dedicated to climate change, and he explains his convictions in well-sourced logic and the forensic language of an engineer. In short, governments influenced by the oil giants that feed our global economy have known the reality of what we face for decades, yet here we are – and now it’s already too late… Wright relished provoking debate, not unlike a certain FIA president he used to work for. “The one thing one can do is try and find out the truth,” he told us. “It’s a bit of work, but people want to believe what suits them.”

One can’t help but wonder how different racing history might have been had Peter Wright been driven by such convictions as a young man, when instead his fire was lit by improving lap times. Inspired by our own Denis Jenkinson in the early 1960s, he said motor sport per se didn’t interest him, rather the cars, the engineering, the process of finding speed… and also winning. “I started at BRM, which was fundamentally an engine company,” he said of his mid-1960s break, in the midst of scraping a third-class degree in mechanical sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge. “I thought I was going to be God’s gift to Formula 1 engine design, then quickly discovered I wasn’t.”

He cited three key leaders in his life as his big influences: Tony Rudd, Colin Chapman and Max Mosley. “I like working for people, but there are not many people I like working for!” he said. Peter owed it all to Rudd. “He gave me a job. Tony was a lovely guy. I was at college and decided BRM was the company I was going to work for. So I wrote to him and he said, ‘No, you don’t want to do that.’ My dad told me, ‘Don’t take no for an answer, they’re just testing you.’ So I insisted to Tony, ‘Yes, I really want to work at BRM.’ He said, ‘You better come and see me then.’ I caught him at the exact moment in which he realised that F1 was going more technical and needed graduate engineers, and that’s why he offered me a chance to spend the summer vacation there [in 1966], and then ultimately a job. I walked straight in at a time of composites and aerodynamics, those basic two key technologies, and Tony was very supportive. He was everybody’s uncle. I effectively followed him to Lotus.”

Rudd left BRM for Lotus in 1969 in the same year Wright was infamously working up an early ‘wing car’ design. When Wright initially tried to follow, Rudd again tried to dissuade him. “Tony said, ‘Don’t go to Lotus, you are not ready.’ Probably one of the best bits of advice I’ve had. So I went to Specialised Mouldings with whom I was basically bringing composites into BRM. I spent four years there and got itchy feet. I applied for a job as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the University of Mauritius and I put Tony down as a reference. He rang me up that night and said, ‘Come to Lotus, there’s a job managing the composites research company developing methods for manufacturing both cars and boats in production. Oh, and in the evenings and weekends you can work on the F1 car.’

“Tony had been given the job of redefining the F1 car following Colin’s failure to replace the Type 72. He said to Tony to choose who he wanted from Team Lotus and set up a think-tank. He got Ralph Bellamy and between them they worked out they needed an aerodynamicist for wind-tunnel work. They knew I’d developed a wing car at BRM. So evenings and weekends it was, before we got the Type 78 to the point where it was being built. I then joined Team Lotus full-time to develop ground effects.”

Chapman set the brief, but then others including Wright made ground effects in F1 a reality. So does the Old Man really deserve the credit? Peter was emphatic in the affirmative, and here’s why. “My feeling is although I came up with a number of things, innovations that Lotus followed successfully or unsuccessfully, they were always thanks to Colin. There’s no doubt at all that without him they wouldn’t have happened. He had an instinct for technology, what was worth pursuing and what wasn’t. And when he thought it was worth pursuing he’d throw the whole bloody company behind it.

“He could also always detect technical bullshit. If something wasn’t working he could tell whether it was because somebody hadn’t done something or hadn’t done it properly, or whether it was a technical barrier that was worth pushing through. There’s no doubt with ground effects he did that. The race engineers and even the drivers were asking why are we bothering, messing around with skirts, and Colin said, ‘No, we’re pushing it.’”

As others have said, Team Lotus under Chapman was intense, chaotic, a little crazy… and fun. Wright held the Old Man in the greatest affection. “I got fired by him twice,” he chuckled. “The second time he took off his corduroy cap, threw it on the ground and jumped up and down on it. Which was quite impressive. Then I explained what I’d done had to be done and he said, ‘Ah, OK’. Picked up his hat, dusted it off, put it back on his head and walked off.”

“Colin threw his cap on the ground and jumped up and down on it”

How Chapman really impressed Wright was when he pitched the Old Man a fresh innovation in the wake of the banning of the twin-chassis Lotus 88 in 1981. Chapman was disenchanted with F1 to the point where Wright reckoned he would have walked away from grand prix racing had he not felt obliged to fulfil his obligations to sponsors. “He was an extraordinary person to work for,” said Peter. “Pitching to him the concept of active suspension, nowadays you’d have to do a 50-slide deck on PowerPoint. I went in with nothing and no idea what it would cost – £15,000 or something. I talked to him for 20 minutes. He realised computers were important, but didn’t like them. The modern era wouldn’t have suited him. Then he said, ‘OK, I’ll get you a car – a Turbo Esprit – and you’ve got six months to get the concept up and running.’ He had an ability to take risks.”

In the wake of Chapman’s death at just 54 in December 1982, Wright was sidetracked away from F1 and active suspension was dropped – perhaps understandably as Peter Warr attempted to stabilise Team Lotus. But the concept was revived in 1987 when Wright returned to the team, with Ayrton Senna claiming (proper) Lotus’s last two grand prix victories in a 97T fitted with active ride. “We lost four years,” said Wright, whose relationship with Warr was rarely smooth. “Colin wouldn’t have dropped it. It was early days, but we were completing grands prix with it, and it wasn’t uncompetitive. The potential was obviously enormous, and it was a technology that got totally wasted at Lotus. Williams did a simpler version and ended up dominating F1. Team Lotus could have been there a long time before.”

In the early 1990s Rudd talked Wright into stepping up to keep the badly listing Team Lotus ship afloat, which he managed for four years in partnership with his friend Peter Collins. When the great ship finally went down at the end of 1994, Wright was left looking for a new job – and a new direction. “Well, Senna had just being killed and I’d always been interested in safety. The first time I’d been the least bit involved was when Chapman asked me to do a report on Ronnie Peterson’s car [after the Swede’s death in the wake of Monza 1978]. That was pretty interesting to see the way the structures had basically not stood up to the crash. I knew Charlie [Whiting, the FIA’s long-serving race director] quite well, and when it was apparent that Team Lotus was not going to survive and I needed a job, I thought I’d go talk to him. I thought it was probably likely I’d end up more on the regulatory side, having broken or challenged regulations over the years. He talked to Max, and Max said, ‘Come see me.’”

Wright revelled in the free rein Mosley gave him during the 1990s, working as part of Professor Sid Watkins’ research group. “Ad hoc” was his description of how his safety work was structured, but his role was formalised after 2001 when Mosley sold the commercial rights for F1 to Bernie Ecclestone for 100 years. Wright was that rare case: someone who approved of the deal, because it funded the formation of the FIA Foundation. In 2004, the FIA Institute for Motorsport Safety was created, an umbrella for various working groups, with its suggestions for new or modified regulations then going for approval to the FIA Safety Commission. Watkins was the commission’s first president, with Wright taking over from 2010.

“The 1990s was an era when Max put money into safety and research, and we were given quite a lot each year to crash things,” he said. “What’s not to like? It was interesting. I was working with great people, particularly doctors. People like Terry Trammell, Steve Olvey, obviously Sid Watkins.”

Four years since his death, Mosley remains divisive. Wright understood why, but made a strong case for Mosley as a forward-thinker whose contribution, especially on safety, must never be overlooked. “Intellectually, he was phenomenal. He had a good technical grasp thanks to his two degrees, in physics and law. I get on with lawyers because they’re logical. I think they’re very close to engineers. He was challenging but fun to work with. If there was an issue that one needed to bring up with him, he got it quickly. If it was something he didn’t understand, he’d find out what it was, and then he was off, and you better be running to keep up. As president of the Safety Commission, I was sort of between the World Council and the research area. When we spotted a major safety issue we would act.”

At least a third of his memoir is taken up with explanations of his safety and regulatory work. “We set the requirement post-Senna’s accident that a driver should be able to go off anywhere and walk away,” he told us. “We developed two things. One is a driver restraint system [the HANS device] and a cockpit from which the driver could walk away from a 60g accident. And then we developed a barrier system which you could hit in any direction at 60g and you’d expect the driver to say, ‘Where’s my spare car?’ We then developed the edges of the circuit to limit any impact to 60g, which needed space” – modern circuits’ large run-off areas. “And we did the high-speed barrier system, which came out of Michael Schumacher’s accident at Silverstone [in 1999] where he had brake failure and went through a tyre barrier and into an earth bank. He was doing 170mph when he hit the bank and the monocoque wasn’t up to the job. So we came up with a spec. It actually takes about 3m at 60g to get that speed off. It was all done on the back of an envelope. You all think it’s worked out on computers, but it’s not!”

We finished by discussing modern F1, its regulations and its future. Here then was another contradiction: as a former acolyte of Chapman, the man who believed in ‘adding lightness’, Wright is partially responsible for today’s heavy F1 breed… “It’s the safety,” he fired back. “That’s not a bad thing. The cars carry more energy than they used to, because they’re 1000hp and not 400. Everything’s bigger because of the extra power and speed, the tyres and wheels, the brakes. So slow them down. That’s one way to do it.”

No surprise he was an advocate for F1’s pledge to chase zero emissions. “Max Mosley got onto the whole sustainability issue quite early on,” he pointed out. “One thing we did was to work out how to offset the entire carbon emissions of F1. This was in the 1990s. It’s flying stuff around the world that’s the problem. The running of the cars is trivial.”

“It’s flying stuff around the world that’s F1’s problem. The cars are trivial”

So what did Wright think of the move back towards V8 engines? “I get it. If that’s what F1 is about, fine. It is all about entertainment. Netflix and Drive to Survive, I watched seven episodes to see how much they talk about technical things. And there was no mention whatsoever of the engine, the aerodynamics, the chassis, the brakes, the wheels or the tyres. And no technical person was featured. That sums it up.

“From 2008, with Tony Purnell, we came up with the current set of F1 regulations under Jean Todt which was put in place in 2014. We did a lot of simulation, a lot of modelling. The regulations have stood the test of time, but they’re no longer relevant to the automotive industry. Now somebody needs to work out what’s the most entertaining thing, what people want, and that’s what it comes down to. Whether it’s a V10 or a V8 at an rpm that’s economically feasible, fine – as long as you don’t pretend it’s anything else. Yes, it should be on a sustainable fuel, but at $300 a litre? Really? That’s what apparently has been quoted. [A substantial rise from the current cost, which is $22-$33 per litre, and a hot topic of discussions with the concerned teams].”

His worry for next year was the complexity of the entertainment on show, that F1 might find itself echoing Formula E (of which he was not a fan). “Formula E is very strategic which you can’t see unless you are a serious anorak. That may happen a bit with F1 for next year, because you’re rationing people on their energy for overtaking and boosting. Explaining that story will be quite hard.”

Contradictions abound within Wright’s life. Cheerful despite his acceptance it’s too late to save our world from a defining change in temperature, he somehow reconciled a future for the frivolous pursuit of racing. We can’t just turn off the things we love, but through the technological curiosity that drove him, Wright believed there are always new ways and means. Was he a pessimist or an optimist? Life just isn’t that binary. Peter was proof you can be a bit of both.

How Did I Get Here? by Peter Wright is out now, price £30, and available to buy at howdidigethere.co.uk