John Barnard's Finest: Some of the Greatest of Barnard's Design

By: Jeremy McMullen

The latter-part of Barnard's Formula One career would be filled with disappointments and disputes. However, there was no disputing the genius of the man from London. In fact, a couple of innovations that are mainstays in Formula One design were first introduced by this man who had been involved in motor racing in some form or manner since the 1960s.

John Barnard would be born in London on the 4th of May in 1946. The war was over and a whole new world loomed on the horizon. It was the period of transition between the piston-powered fighter planes and the intriguing jets that made their first appearance late in the war.

Barnard would gain a diploma from Watford College of Technology and would soon join the General Electric Company helping to build lightbulbs. While looking for inspiration himself, Barnard would tinker on the side. He would work on an Austin A35 van in his spare time and this would lead to him becoming used building and replacing—all facets of car design. From that point on, a career in motorsport seemed on the horizon and that would eventually lead to a position as a junior designer with Lola in the late 1960s.

Barnard would immediately put his skills to work designing Formula Vee and SuperVee cars for Lola. These small Lolas would be important training grounds for drivers of the future, but they would also serve as an important training ground for Barnard as well.

John's work would mostly focus on the Formula Vee cars early on but the Londoner would also have some input in some other projects Lola would be involved with. One of those in which he would be included would be a sportscar project known as the T260.

Bruce McLaren's outfit had been dominating Can-Am racing. The 'Bruce and Denny Show' rolled through one town after another and completely dominated. Lola would be determined to bring an end to the domination and would manage to hire Jackie Stewart to head up its driver effort. Carl Haas would agree to run the effort. Therefore, all that was left was for Lola to design and build a car capable of dethroning the almighty McLarens.

Barnard would lend his skills to help design the challenger that would become known as the T260. The design would feature an obviously-blunt nose that could include what was dubbed the 'cow catcher' front wing. The boxy design would make use of flush-mounted NACA vents to feed air to the radiators and oil coolers, as well as, the front brakes. Unequal length wishbones, Bilstein dampers and coil springs provided the control and handling Stewart needed to be competitive. Combined with an 8.1-liter Chevrolet V8, the T260 would be competitive.

In the hands of Stewart, the Lola T260 would nearly pull off the coup. Unfortunately, unreliability would serve as the car's undoing and the McLaren dominance would only continue. Nonetheless, the groundwork had been laid and it was believed that with such talented designers, as Barnard, Lola could provide the car capable of glory in Can-Am.

Barnard would not merely work on Can-Am sportscars though. Around the same time the firm would be building the T260, Barnard would be employed building a new car for what was, effectively, the new 'Group 5' regulations for the sportscar World Chamionship. This would result in the T280 and the T290.

The T280 would feature a team of designers that would be akin to the whos-who of Formula One in the 1980s and 1990s. Joining Lola, Barnard would find himself amongst a team of talented designers. One of those he would befriend and would work together with on the T280 and T290 projects would be none other than Patrick Head.

Barnard and Head would work together designing and building the T280. The new regulations had opened the door to Lola as there were no longer any homologation requirements concerning engines. This meant the Cosworth DFV engine was available to use and this ideally-suited Lola who based many of its designs around the engine. Chief Designer Bob Marston, Barnard and Head would then work together to design a car that would make the most of the Cosworth engine.

Not wanting to increase costs terribly, nor reinvent the wheel, Marston would lead his team to base the new T280 design loosely around its predecessor the T210. There would be some obvious changes made to the design. The team would draw from the work in the wind tunnel and would end up employing a more blunt nose design to the T280 than the more pointed design of the T210. In fact, overall, the design would be much more boxy, just like the T260 taking aim at the McLarens in Can-Am.

Then there was the Cosworth engine. Unlike the four-cylinder models that had been employed in other designs, the V8 Cosworth was much stronger and more rigid. This meant the engine could actually serve as a stressed member of the chassis. This enabled Barnard and Head to rid the car of extra tubes and other support structures making the car quite a bit lighter.

One of the other major differences in the T280 would come in the form of inwardly-mounted disc brakes. These inboard-mounted brakes would enable the new design to wear bigger shoes, and therefore, provide better handling. Integrated with a lightweight aluminum monocoque chassis and a fiberglass body the Lola T280 would be a competitive package that would earn victory in the 1000 Kilometers of Paris. All-in-all, the T280 would prove fast but unreliable. Of course, the worse mark on the resume of the T280 would be the fatal crash at Le Mans in 1972 that would take the life of Jo Bonnier.

Barnard and Head would collaborate one more time while both remained at Lola. The new Group 5 regulations would rid the Sportscar World Championship of the monstrous engines that were threatening to ruin the sport through exorbitant costs. The Group 6 regulations would become the new baseline for the regulations and limited engine size to three-liters.

Lola had built a car for Group 6 before there were the regulation changes. Known as the T212, the venture would prove successful and Lola would practically own the two-liter sportscar class. The new regulations allowed Lola to design a car that was suitable for both a three-liter and a two-liter engine. The three-liter option would be known as the T280. The two-liter version would be called, very simply, the T290.

In 1971, Barnard would be involved in the Lola project aimed at removing McLaren from the throne of Can-Am. His efforts within the design team would help Lola to nearly achieve the aim. This would catch the attention of none other than the very team he had been hired to destroy.

In 1972, Barnard would join McLaren and would be put to work immediately. At the time, McLaren was very similar to Lola in that the company was involved in numerous different projects in a number of different genres of motorsports. Besides Formula One, McLaren had a hand in Indycar, as well as, the short-lived Formula 5000 series.

At the time of his coming to McLaren, Gordon Coppuck was heavily involved in the design of McLaren's Indycar design. Known as the M16, the car would make use of the radical wedge shape that would help it to go on to become one of the most successful cars in Indianapolis 500 history. Upon arrival, Barnard would join in with Coppuck in the project.

At the time, McLaren had looked every bit the large factory effort with its dominant presence in Can-Am. However, overall, the company was still relatively small. However, Barnard would lend his talents to Coppuck's design.

Coppuck would barrow inspiration for the design of the M15 and M16 from Lotus' 72. He and Barnard realized the wide, low nose was ideal for reducing drag. Therefore, Coppuck would believe the design perfect for Indianapolis where high average speeds were the order of the day. The wedge shape, and other designs details, would enable McLaren to go on to victory in the Indianapolis 500 in 1972, 1974 and 1976. Overall, the M16 would not just take three victories in the race but would also earn four second places and two thirds. The collaboration between Coppuck and Barnard would not merely make McLaren a prominent name in Indycar racing, it would go a long way to helping Barnard build a reputation of his own.

The Indycar project would be just one of the projects within McLaren's operations Barnard would find himself involved with. John would also join Coppuck in another design effort.

McLaren had earned its first victory as a manufacturer in 1972 with Denny Hulme driving an M19. Barnard would join the company too late to have a hand in the design of the M19. However, he would have a hand in a design that would help McLaren become one of Formula One's best teams.

Coppuck, with the help of Barnard, would set about designing a replacement for the M19C. Having become convinced of the advantages of the wedge design, Coppuck would design the M23. The aluminum monocoque chassis would be wide and low and would blend seamlessly into the car's nose and sidepods, which not only housed the engine radiators but the oil coolers as well. Barnard would set to work toward the back of the design. Realizing the need to get rid of as much unnecessary components as possible, he would devise a single pillar support for the rear wing. The M23 would be the first such design with just a single pillar design and this helped to improve the efficiency of the car at the rear.

In addition to the work around the rear wing, Barnard would also be instrumental in the use of foam injected sidepod designs to further help reduce weight. This, and some other minor tweaking by Barnard would all come into play on the M23.

Sporting a number of different configurations throughout its lifetime, the M23 would be immediately successful earning the Constructors' Championship for McLaren for the very first time in 1974. In addition to winning the constructors' championship, the M23 would earn the championship for Emerson Fittipaldi and would prove a very difficult car to beat over the next few seasons in Formula One.

The M23 would remain in use right up through 1977 and would help James Hunt to score his one and only World Championship in 1976 in that famous duel with Niki Lauda in his Ferrari.

Having gained experience working with Coppuck in the design of the M16 Indycar and M23 Formula One machine, Barnard would attempt his hand at building his very own design for McLaren.

Within racing circles, Formula 5000 was a popular series aiming at reducing costs and providing close, competitive racing. The cars were powerful and very capable. McLaren would be involved in the series from a very early stage as a result of its involvement in Can-Am. Coppuck would design the M3 to take part in the series followed on by the M10A in 1969. The M10 would give way to the M18 in 1971 followed by the M22 in 1972. Then, in 1975, Barnard would be heavily involved designing what was to be the M25. Unfortunately, the project would never materialize and Barnard would be off to work with Parnelli Jones' Formula One effort.

In 1975, Barnard would be an employee of Parnelli Jones. Jones had been the winner of the rather controversial 1963 Indianapolis 500 and had won the race twice more, in 1970 and 1971, as a car owner. Having experienced the 'funny-car' invasion first-hand, Jones would be determined to invade Formula One and achieve the same kind of success he had in Indycar. Jones recognized Barnard's talents and believed the Londoner had what it took to make it happen for the man from Texarkana, Arkansas.

Jones had support from Firestone and hired none other than Maurice Philippe from Lotus and Mario Andretti. The partnership would earn a 7th place result in its very first race, but would be in trouble after that. Despite the fact Barnard had come on with the team, Firestone had pulled out of motor racing and left as Parnelli's major sponsor. However, Barnard would take the team's VPJ4 chassis and would manage to improve it over the course of the '75 season. The two highlights of the season would be a 4th place result in the Swedish Grand Prix and a 5th in the French round a short time later. The team would start its '76 campaign with a 6th place result in the South African race, and with a car now a couple of years old. But, with major sponsorship gone, the team would not have the finances to carry on. Barnard would join the team as it switched its focus back to Indycar racing and the Indianapolis 500.

This switch back to Indycar racing meant Barnard needed to set about converting the Formula One car into an Indycar. A part of this change would be the use of a newly-designed transverse gearbox which mounted perpendicular to the length of the car. Such a design helped improve stability and aerodynamics and was considered a rather radical change for Indycar design at the time.

Barnard would move on and would join none other than Jim Hall. Jim Hall had lost out on a controversial, but brilliant, design known as the 2J. Using fans to suck the air out from underneath the car, the 2J achieved incredible levels of grip and would be deemed illegal according to regulations at the time. However, Hall would watch Lotus and their 72 very closely. The 72 would achieve the same results without the fans. Hall had found his answer, and, with Barnard, his man to make it all possible.

John had helped build a wedge-shaped car before when he worked with McLaren. Therefore, he knew very well about ground-effects and the possibility of building such a car for Indycar racing.

Barnard would begin work on the 2K project building a very elegant design that was concerned with aerodynamics at nearly every turn. This meant a car that featured a rather conventional aluminum monocoque chassis with a body that was very aerodynamically-minded. The front suspension, therefore, would feature a rocker upper that blended into the nose of the car and then a full wishbone lower that sat at the same level as the front wing. The driver sat down inside a full-wrapped windscreen and the rear wing attached to the rear in such a way as to keep the center area entirely open to the airflow. Then, of course, there would be the skirted sidepods that produced the all-important ground effects.

Combined with a 2.7-liter Cosworth V8 producing more than 700bhp, the 2K looked the part of a winner. The car would demonstrate its potential when Al Unser took the lead of the 1979 Indianapolis 500. Unser would lead the way for a lot of the way until a transmission problem brought an end to what appeared to be a certain victory.

However, at Phoenix at the end of the year, Unser would start the race from 2nd on the grid and would lead 138 of 150 total laps and would take its first victory. This would be just a sign of things to come.

The following year, Johnny Rutherford would come on board as Hall's driver. Barnard would make some more improvements to the 2K and the car would win the first race of the season in Ontario. Then, at that year's Indy 500, Rutherford would drive the 2K to victory giving Barnard yet another victory around the Brickyard. The 2K would go on to win three more races over the course of the season and would eventually win the championship beating Roger Penske's effort. The success with Hall's Chaparral would bring a familiar team calling on Barnard.

Ron Dennis had worked in Formula One with Brabham and Team Lotus. Dennis would then begin thinking about his own effort and would found his own effort, which would become known as Project 3. In the 1970s, Dennis' efforts would concentrate on Formula 2 and Formula 3. As a result, Ron would found Project 4 Racing and would quickly find his efforts successful.

Dennis had his eye on a Formula One effort but needed a designer that could make his efforts successful. Before he would actually make a move, Ron would decide on his man. The success with the 2K had proven Barnard's talents to Dennis and he would hire John to spearhead his Formula One efforts.

Poor results made McLaren vulnerable and Dennis would take advantage of the situation. He would take over Barnard's former employer but would keep the McLaren name. Though the McLaren name would remain as the brand name, all subsequent cars would be known by a different name. Instead of the 'M' representing McLaren, the cars would be now known as the MP4 signifying the marriage between McLaren and Project Four.

Dennis put Barnard in charge of the design department and would give his fellow Englishman a lofty goal. He would have control of the design department but he wanted an innovative car in which to contest every season of Formula One. Barnard would respond with the team's very first design.

Barnard would certainly provide Dennis with a revolutionary chassis in his very first try with the rebranded team. Dubbed the MP4/1, the car would be the first in Formula One's history to be the first carbon composite design. The composite material had been used in Formula One for years, but for just small components. The MP4/1, however, would have its entire chassis made out of the material making it very light and very rigid. The car would set the benchmark for Formula One design from that day on.

Having spent those years chasing glory at Indy, Barnard had been free to come up with radical designs. He was not stuck in the Formula One paradigm but understood very well the benefits of ground effects. The problem was that convential materials limited the area available to produce the important aerodynamic effect. The only option left to him was to build the car of a different material. This way, the chassis would be no bigger than the 'driver's bum' and more area would be opened up to produce the ground effect.

Barnard would take many other cues from the Chaparral 2K in the designing and building of the MP4/1. Dennis would heavily support Barnard's efforts telling him, 'You tell me what you want to do technically and I'll get the money.' This kind of in-house support would lead to Barnard working with several specialty companies that had much more to do in aerospace than in motorsports, but the results of the efforts would pay huge dividends as the car would earn three successive podiums, including a victory in the British Grand Prix, in its very first year of competition. These results were very much the result of innovations included by Barnard in his design. There was the use of composites and the use of wind tunnels. However, the wind tunnel also helped Barnard to make use of another innovative design feature that remains a standard in the Formula One to this very day—'coke-bottle' styling.

The design of the rear of the car, Barnard would find, was just as important as the front. By wrapping the rear end much more tightly air could flow out the back of the car over the rear diffuser, thereby increasing the downforce of the car as a result of the low pressure created. This made Barnard's design aerodynamically efficient and would enable McLaren to just get stronger and stronger. And, over the course of the 1982 season Niki Lauda and John Watson would both win two races over the course of the season and would secure 2nd place in the Constructors' Championship for McLaren. The combination of McLaren and Barnard were just getting warmed-up.

Various iterations of the MP4/1 would transpire before Barnard revealed his next successor within the McLaren Project 4 family. The next in the family line would be, simply enough, the MP4/2, and this car would serve as the starting point of run of dominance that would see McLaren become the team of the 1980s.

Turbo-powered cars had now come into full effect in Formula One. Ron Dennis had used all of his skills to convince Porsche to develop a 1.5-liter turbocharged engine for Barnard's designs. Porsche had an indomitable reputation when it came to turbocharged cars after its nearly uninterrupted reign at Le Mans. The combination of power and reliability made Porsche the most desired engine for Dennis' money. The problem was that he didn't have the money. All of Dennis' money was tied up into operational costs, which included Barnard's efforts at designing McLaren's first championship winner car in nearly a decade.

Mansour Ojjeh would foot the bill to get the engines, but Barnard would have requests of his own. This included the need for an engine that was as narrow as possible to maintain the ground effects. But then, just when Porsche set to work building such an engine, ground effects would be banned and Barnard would need to rework his design. This meant the Porsche engine would be used in the evolved MP4/1.

Barnard would have an advantage. The TAG/Porsche engine would produce an incredible amount of power. This would enable Barnard to produce the MP4/2 with rather overweight sidepods that helped to hide all of the components of the engine and maintain all-important cooling. Additionally, the increase in power meant John could incorporate a number of different wing elements, such as the 'barn-door' wings that helped to generate much of the downforce lost from the banning of the ground effects.

In race trim, the Barnard design MP4/2, with its efficient TAG engine, was quite fast and this translated into seven victories for Alain Prost and five for Niki Lauda. Lauda would win the Drivers' Championship by a half a point over his teammate Prost and this meant McLaren absolutely dominated the Constructors' Championship beating rival Ferrari by nearly a hundred points. Twelve of sixteen races would be won by McLaren over the course of the 1984 season and this would be just the beginning of a period in which McLaren and victory were almost always synonymous.

The MP4/2B would continue the success for McLaren and Barnard. The car, in the hands of Alain Prost, would go on to win the Drivers' and the Constructors' Championships and would earn Barnard the reputation as the designer to have in Formula One. Beating out rivals, such as his good friend at Williams, Patrick Head, Barnard was a man in demand and perhaps the biggest name in Formula One was after him.

Barnard had laid the foundations with the MP4/2. McLaren's run of dominance was underway. It took other teams very little time to recognize John's brilliance and what they needed to do to compete. However, the actual carrying out of those elements was easier said than done. The easiest way would be to try and bring in the man that had introduced the innovation in the first place. This is exactly what Scuderia Ferrari had in mind.

Before John departed McLaren his cars would earn 31 victories and would give the team back-to-back championships in 1984 and 1985, and then a runner-up result in 1986. Clearly what Barnard was doing worked and what was going on at Ferrari didn't. Therefore, John appeared to be the ideal man to help the Maranello-based legend return to its winning ways. So, Barnard would leave McLaren for Ferrari at the end of 1986. The task before him was not an easy one, but he would certainly help to turn things around.

Being the designer of the 1980s, Barnard would be able to name his terms. This, he would feel, would be important as he knew the Italian press was particularly demanding. Therefore, in an effort to clear the air around him to enable his creative efforts, Barnard would talk Ferrari into building a design office in Guildford, England. The Ferrari Guildford Technical Office would be unlike anything Ferrari had ever done in the past. Before, even foreign workers had stayed with the factory in Maranello. However, those workers were not Barnard and Ferrari was willing to do just about anything to take the fight back to McLaren.

The first car Barnard would find himself involved with at Ferrari would be the F1/87 and the updated F1/88C. Though he would have a lot of input on elements of the design, the actual groundwork of the car's design would actually be laid by Gustav Brunner before Barnard arrived to work with the team. Construction of the car had already begun, and though the direction of the design was not what Barnard would have taken, he was forced, due to time and financial constraints, to do his best to make it work.

John would do what he could but he would mostly look ahead to the future. He knew that in 1989 turbocharged engines would be banned. Normally aspirated engines were going to be the only option available to teams by 1989, and so, Barnard would set his sights on building a car around the new engines.

John had introduced a technical revolution in the early '80s when he designed and built a chassis made entirely of composites. It was now the end of the 1980s, and he was about to introduce another revolution.

Barnard wouldn't just focus on the design of the '89 Ferrari. Technical innovations and the inner-workings of systems are considered of equal importance to John and the Ferrari 640 would rely heavily upon such notions for its success.

The 1988 season had seen Barnard's former employer, McLaren utterly dominate winning 15 of the 16 races. At Ferrari, the mood would be dark and distraught after Enzo Ferrari's death in August of that year. However, in spite of McLaren's ruthless rule in Formula One, Barnard's efforts with what he had been given would help the Scuderia to provide its founder an unspeakable tribute at Monza just a month after the death of Ferrari.

The Italian Grand Prix would take place at its usual time of early September. At that time of year the shadows begin to lengthen and the air begins to chill. For Ferrari fans the world over, winter had already come. However, on that 11th of September in 1988, Gerhard Berger and Michele Alboreto would manage to push the sun a little higher in the sky providing a euphoric one-two finish before the raving Tifosi.

While his handiwork was doing its best to restore hope on the track, Barnard was hard at work designing the car '89 car that he, and everyone else, longed would bring Ferrari back to the top. Against McLaren, he knew he would need every advantage possible and he and his team were working on exactly that.

Project 640, as it was known within Ferrari circles, held a secret. Outwardly, the car had some differences from the F1-88. The nose was low and wider. The sidepods were longer and boasting of a much more obvious 'coke-bottle' shape. This evolution in design enabled much more cooler air to wrap around the sides of the car and exit out the back of the car instead of merely spilling out the sides or over the top as had been done on his earlier McLaren designs. This increased the efficiency of the Ferrari and helped the new F1-89 to overcome any other deficiencies.

Diehard Ferrari aficionados would be pleased as a 3.5-liter V12 would be under the bonnet. Taking from his own revolution, Barnard would design what would become known as the F1-89 with a Kevlar and carbon-fiber monocoque chassis. So, outwardly, the F1-89 certainly did sport some advances. Many of the other technical chiefs within the sport would praise Barnard's work creating a design with such clean and uncomplicated lines. However, the F1-89 was not necessarily a technical innovation. But such determinations would be wrong.

When Nigel Mansell and Gerhard Berger took to the track for testing there was something very interesting. Neither of the drivers removed their hands from the steering wheel. Barnard's next technical revolution was now underway. He had given birth to the semi-automatic, paddle-operated, gearbox.

Nobody really gave the F1-89 a chance with the semi-automatic gearbox. It had been an idea that passed around through the heads of other designers and technical gurus but none would believe it would be reliable enough to become viable in Formula One. Such was the belief concerning composite chassis and Barnard would prove the establishment wrong. And, on the 26th of March, at the very first race of the 1989 season, Nigel Mansell would help Barnard to prove everyone wrong again as he charged to victory by nearly 8 seconds over Alain Prost in the McLaren.

In spite of the new paddle-operated semi-automatic gearbox Barnard could do nothing to overcome the advantage McLaren had been carrying ahead after its dominant 1988 season. Even with a change in engines, there was really no denying the team's confidence and momentum. All John could do was design a car that could eat away at that confidence and swing favor back in Ferrari's direction. Barnard's efforts would not go unrewarded though. A strong second half of the season would see Ferrari climb to 3rd place in the Constructors' Championship. Sadly, this wouldn't be as good as the team's 2nd place result the year before with a car that had not been originally designed by Barnard.

There was simply no beating the duo of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna. The only hope was that they would beat each other. And that is exactly what would happen. Their relationship would turn terribly sour and Ferrari would be able to lure Prost to the legendary outfit. This meant Prost was to be reunited with Barnard. After the run at McLaren, the prospects of such a partnership seemed very promising. Prost got along well with John but, unfortunately, the partnership would never have an opportunity of producing something special. Differences with Ferrari's management and the desire of Barnard to seek new pastures meant he would leave the team at the end of the '89 season.

Barnard would not be out of Formula One for very long before other teams came calling. One of those with the most promising offer would be Benetton. Interested in a new challenge, John would take the offer and would set to work designing their next chassis.

John would join Benetton in 1990 and there would be very little time to come up with an all-new design. The team already had its B189. Therefore, with the help of Rory Byrne, Barnard would make do with he had and would evolve the design to create what would become known as the B190.

Compared to its competition, the B190 still had an old look and did not feature the same aerodynamic lines of its competitors. Barnard didn't have the time and was severely challenged to come up with something that could be built in time. He had come to Benetton looking for a new challenge, and he certainly had found one. However, before the season would be over, the B190 would secure a couple of surprise victories. So, in many respects the B190 proved Benetton was not beyond making some huge steps forward. John, therefore, would pour all his efforts into the new car for '91.

Tyrrell had introduced a revolution with its high nose design. While many would recognize the merits of such a design, few would go to any extreme to adopt the idea. As one who had initiated a couple of innovations of his own, Barnard would recognize the advantages of the high nose and would incorporate the design into his upcoming design.

The new car, the B191, would be an all-new design for all intents and purposes. As a result, the new design would not be ready in time for the start of the season. Therefore, Benetton would be left running a 'B' spec version of the B190 for the first two rounds of the '91 season.

Having established the Benetton Advanced Research Group, Barnard would produce the B191 with its high nose, cleaner lines and much more tightly wrapped sidepods and rear end. Though the new car would not make an impressive debut, Barnard's latest design would certainly leave an impression when, in the hands of Nelson Piquet, the new car came through victorious in the Canadian Grand Prix, just the fifth race of the season. Another podium finish in the Belgian Grand Prix would be about the only other highlight of the season, but, the car would serve as a basis of what was to come for Benetton, which included two World Championships for Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 1995. Sadly, a dispute over money would ruin the relationship between Barnard and Benetton and John would end up leaving the team not long after his B191 achieved that first victory in Canada.

Again, Barnard would be without something to do. He would tinker here and there until, once again, a former employer would be ready and willing to call him back into their ranks.

John had joined Ferrari in the late 1980s and had started out by building a design office that would become known as Ferrari Design and Development. After an abortive effort to help get a rather covert Toyota F1 project off the ground, Barnard would be back to work for Ferrari at the FDD. This marked the second time in his career that Barnard had rejoined a team he had once worked for and, once again, Scuderia Ferrari was not the team it once was in Formula One.

Not surprisingly, John's first efforts would be to bring Ferrari's technical efforts up to the latest standards and this would include making use of a wind tunnel facility in Bristol and further refining FDD. Joining Ferrari early in 1993, John would turn his efforts toward the 1994 season and the 645 project.

The design of the previous year featured a slightly-raised, pointed nose with a much more rounded, bullet-like shape to the nose and the rest of the car. Barnard would come to the team and would tweak the design here and there but it was a distant runner compared to the Williams driven by Alain Prost and Damon Hill. Looking toward 1994, Barnard would try and simplify the car's design.

John would keep the raised, bullet-like, nose and would further refine the splitter underneath the driver's legs. The first edition of the car would feature teardrop-shaped inlets that would be created to help shorten the sidepods and to make the sides of the car much more compact. However, the car would be quickly refined and rather conventional sidepods would be developed sporting the radiator inlets further to the outside replacing the teardrop-shaped inlets that had been initially used.

In a year that would be marred by the deaths of Roland Ratzenberger and Aryton Senna, Ferrari would enjoy victory when Gerhard Berger took the win at Hockenheim. In a short period of time Barnard had managed to help reduce the gap between Ferrari and the regular front-runners.

Believing in simple, elegant lines as being the best indicator of a rightly-designed car, Barnard would make sure the lines of the new 412T2 would be exactly that. A low-slung nose, tall sidepods and the familiar coke-bottle sides and rear seemed something of a throw-back compared to the direction Benetton and other teams were going. This simplicity would not only prove to be quick straight-away, it would also be a very straight-forward car for drivers Jean Alesi and Gerhard Berger to set up.

Widely considered the most beautiful car in the paddock, the 412T2 would also prove competitive. Getting back to basics to a degree, Barnard would design sidepods that would be as short as possible but that would have squared-off inlets to help aid in cooling. All told, the 412T2 would be a considerable leap ahead from the previous year's car and would earn Jean Alesi his one and only victory in Formula One. Achieving more than 70 points over the course of the season, Ferrari recover to finish in 3rd place in the Constructors' Championship.

Heading into the 1996 season, Jean Todt would manage a small coup by signing none other than Michael Schumacher. Schumacher and Todt had come to the team with the thought being to restore the Scuderia to its former glory. Testing the 412T2 for the first time, Schumacher would declare his defense of the World Championship in 1995 would have 'been a lot easier'. Therefore, it was clear Barnard had not lot his touch when it came to designing suitable F1 cars. Unfortunately, being based out of England, Barnard was out of touch with Ferrari's new mindset of family. There had already been some strains between the team and himself as a result of the distance between the two entities geographically.

It was clear Barnard's days with Ferrari were coming to an end once again. However, before he would depart the team he would pen his final design for the Maranello outfit. The F310 would see a switch to a 3-liter 10-cylinder engine. Looking to take advantage of the smaller and lighter engine, John would design another innovative car.

The nose would undergo some changes over the course of the season including a very slightly raised design to improve airflow to the underside of the nose and the splitter. Then there was another that would have a dramatically raised, rather bulbous, nose supported by twin pillars.

A good deal of effort would go into the design of the sidepods of the car. In an effort to increase airflow underneath and to the rear of the car that radiator inlets would be designed in a fashion similar to intake ducts used on fight aircraft and positioned well out to the sides. The area in between would have curvature similar to an airplane wing thereby splitting the airflow to the underside of the car and the rear wing at the back.

Despite all of the key elements in place, the F310 would underperform somewhat, though there would be some moments in which the Ferrari showed surprising pace against much stronger competitors.

The pressure to join the team in Maranello was now too great for Barnard to ignore. He had to make a choice. He was hard a work designing what would become the F310B for the 1997 season when he made the choice to leave the team. John would appoint a couple of talented designers and engineers to take his place. Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne would oversee the final stages of the construction of the 310B. It would end up being the design much credit must be given for helping to restore Ferrari to the top of Formula One.

Sporting a highly-raised, pointed nose, beautifully-sculpted sidepods and a neatly wrapped rear end, the F310B would have to be considered the ultimate collaboration of all of Barnard's innovative designs and theories. Were it not for that unfortunate coming together with Jacques Villeneuve in Jerez at the end of the season, the car would nearly carry Michael Schumacher to his third World Championship. The car would rekindle, in just one season, Ferrari's hopes for the future. And, in many respects, Rory Byrne and Ross Brawn would build upon the concept of the 310B and would design the F2000, which would give the team its first Drivers' World Championship in more than 25 years.

Leaving Ferrari, Barnard would negotiate with Ferrari and would end up purchasing FDD from them. John would then establish his own effort known as B3 Technologies. This would lead to a deal with Tom Walkinshaw's Arrows team for 1998. This deal would quickly turn bad when Walkinshaw learned Barnard's company was also doing subcontract work for Alain Prost's own team at the same time. As a result, the deal with Arrows would be finished. However, Barnard's B3 Technologies would continue to do work for the Prost team. Barnard himself would serve as a technical consultant for the team in 1999.

During his time working with Prost Grand Prix, Barnard would help the struggling team to remain a potential threat to steal a good result from some of the other stronger teams. In 1999, Jarno Trulli would come through to finish the European Grand Prix in 2nd place at the wheel of the AP02. Olivier Panis was considered one of the strongest drivers in the field and routinely demonstrated just what the Prost cars were capable of doing; at least before reliability problems ruined the effort.

Following the 2001 season, Prost Grand Prix would close its doors and Barnard would find himself out of Formula One yet again. Never one to consider a different racing series out of his reach, Barnard would try to lend his expertise to the world of Moto GP becoming a technical director of Kenny Roberts' effort. This foray into the motorcycle world would be brief and John would leave the world of motor racing behind to pursue much more pastoral pursuits.

One of his criticisms of Formula One today is in the length of the regulations, and therefore, the lack of true creativity, and therefore, ugliness as a result of the pursuit for aerodynamic gains. It would make so much sense then Barnard would leave such a world of Formula One to design and build carbon-fiber furniture. Such a pursuit enables creativity and beauty to blend together into a piece of elegant, and comfortable, work of art.

While many other designers would have many more championships and victories to their credit, there is absolutely no way the name of John Barnard can be excluded from any discussion of great Formula One designers. In so many ways John revolutionized the world of Formula One design making the whole endeavor as much an effort in aerospace as simple car design. Beyond that, there are some innovations that just wont go away, and likely never will, when it comes to car construction and components. Therefore, there is just no way the name of John Barnard is ever going to go away from the discussion of Formula One's finest designers.

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