My friend and former colleague Peter Wright, who has died aged 79, was a racing car engineer. He helped the Lotus Formula One team win the world championship in 1978 by co-inventing (with Ralph Bellamy) the “ground effect” chassis design, an innovation that improved tyre contact with the track, thereby greatly enhancing adhesion and handling.
He later became managing director of Lotus Engineering, where he finessed the revolutionary “active suspension” system that he had pioneered in an earlier role with Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus.
Despite dwindling financial resources, Peter worked with many others to keep the Lotus racing team going until 1994, when the money finally ran out.
His career then took a sideways turn when Max Mosley, the boss of the sport’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), hired him to help improve driver safety.
Working with the FIA’s medical delegate, Sid Watkins, he helped develop new cockpit materials, helmet designs and safety barriers, all of which dramatically reduced fatal and life-changing accidents and had a major influence on domestic car design. In recognition of this he was appointed president of the FIA safety commission in 2010, where he remained until 2021.
Peter was born in Farnham, Surrey, to John Wright, a polar explorer, and Dorothy Fetherstonhaugh, who worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. The family lived for a time in Sudan, where Peter was home-schooled by his mother until he was sent to be a boarder at Wellington college in Berkshire.
Gifted as he was, he admitted to neglecting his later studies at Trinity College, Cambridge, leaving with a lowly third in mechanical engineering. However, in 1967, having secured a holiday job at British Racing Motors, he sufficiently impressed their technical director, Tony Rudd, to be offered a full-time post working on their complex engine projects and aerodynamics.
After Rudd was fired in 1969, Peter joined Specialised Mouldings, who made fibreglass bodywork for various racing teams. While there he met Chapman, who noted his pioneering work on reducing the weight of cars. He joined Lotus in 1974.
Away from racing, Peter restored and flew a vintage Tiger Moth plane, developed a new style of engine system for gliders and built and raced exotic sports cars, including a Bugatti Type 51 and a rare chain-driven GN cyclecar.
Using the bones of a derelict barn, he also built a sustainable home on a Welsh Marches hillside just outside Presteigne in Powys, living off-grid with his third wife, Dorothy (nee McGuire), whom he married in 2018.
In addition he found time to write a book, F1 Technology and Ferrari Formula 1, published in 2003, and contributed articles to several specialist periodicals, including Classic Motoring Review, which I edited. In 2024 he wrote a richly entertaining memoir, How Did I Get Here?
Peter’s first two marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by Dorothy and by three children, Meg and Alice, from his first marriage to Melody Sanger, and Harold, from his second marriage, to Hanna (nee Woolhouse).
