Rory Byrne recently turned 80 and is the icing on the cake as the only technician working on ground effect from 1978 to today. Since exploring the fabulous Lotus 79 dominating F.1 in F.2, he injected it first into Toleman Group’s March 782, then into Ralt, and finally into the first Toleman single-seater, destined to conquer the 1980 Formula 2.
In other words, no one on Planet Earth has more experience, data, and case studies than him when it comes to ground effect, returning to F.1 in 2022. Rory is also the only one still in service, albeit as a Ferrari consultant and mostly remotely, of the Dream Team Montezemolo-Todt-Schumi-Brawn-Byrne himself. A person capable of spanning all seasons of modern Circus, from sliding miniskirts to stepped floors, passing through turbochargers, chassis adjustments, and countless other innovations. He was there and never slept. Never. And often, he won. More and more often, truth be told. In F.1, there are visible and invisible geniuses. The former are histrionic, theatrical, and flamboyant on stage. Colin Chapman, Mauro Forghieri, and Gordon Murray are among them. Instead, among those who, in the civilization of hyper-connected mega-information, hardly leave an apparent trace, there is Rory Byrne, a South African from Pretoria, born on January 10, 1944, and therefore caught in the act of turning eighty.
Byrne can be summarized in various ways, but one is enough: as Technical Director, he won 7 Drivers’ and 7 Constructors’ World Championships, all with Michael Schumacher as team leader, first at Benetton – two Drivers’ and one Constructors’ -, and then at Ferrari with 110 World Grand Prix victories, 91 of which were with Michael at the wheel, and the rest scattered among Barrichello, Irvine, Herbert, Piquet, and Berger.
The truth? There has never been anyone like him in motorsport. He boasts a wonderful university career, with a degree obtained three years in advance, in industrial chemistry. It’s strange to note that the two symbolic technicians of the ’80s and ’90s, Barnard and Byrne, are one a draftsman and the other a chemist, not real engineers. Interesting, isn’t it? The fact is that Rory, in addition to being a passionate driver since his teenage years, is someone who drools over technology applied to racing and starts in the second half of the ’60s, in an era when South Africa is the only country in the world to have a national F.1 championship parallel to the world championship. Rory tries racing: “On a dry lap, I was okay, but I couldn’t keep the pace,” he cuts it short. Where he excels is in car preparation. Any car. He has a stake in a workshop, and he, just over 20 years old, touches any vehicle that comes in, from Beetles to single-seaters, making them faster. Much faster.
In the environment, even though he is young and shy, they look at him with respect, and more legends than anecdotes circulate about him. One in particular. At 17, he becomes the world champion of model gliders. Do you know how? You build your beautiful aircraft, refine it, and launch it into the wind, relying solely on its aerodynamic penetration capacity. The winner is the one who keeps it in the air longer than anyone else. Okay, Rory always triumphs, yet it’s sad because almost always his model planes are so perfect that they stay in the air until they are forever lost. If he launches them, he wins, but paradoxically, he loses them. The boy’s planes never land again. And rivals emphasize a disturbing detail: his balsa wood models, to look at them, have nothing different from the others. However, in practice, they turn out to be infinitely balanced. How and why will remain a mystery. Only he knows. That explains Rory Byrne. His shining, genius, but also the psychomagical part, the almost incomprehensible one.
Rory Byrne is not a revolutionary but an evolutionist. He never poses as a maximalist but always as a reformer. “Yes to evolution, no to revolution” is his mantra. If the other geniuses of F.1 have the spark of invention, Augustine’s gnoseological glow, the short circuit, the enlightenment after which nothing is the same, Byrne doesn’t. In short, Forghieri introduces the wing in F.1, perfects his own flat 12-cylinder, sublimates the transverse gearbox, studies more than a thousand, Chapman introduces the monocoque, the reclined driving position, the load-bearing engine, the Venturi effect, Murray practices with the trapezoidal section, the skim radiators, the fan, the skid, and God knows what else, Barnard creates the all-carbon F.1 and puts the gearbox on the steering wheel. Byrne, on the other hand, apparently innovates nothing.
Yet, with him, Senna almost wins his first Grand Prix, with him, Schumi wins them all, and with him, Ferrari will change its skin, mentality, approach, becoming the team with the longest, most intense, and substantial winning streak ever seen in the World Championship. The usual story. Byrne doesn’t invent anything, but he always refines everything. He is pure postmodern racing.
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In 1970s South Africa, there is a very talented young driver, Klomfass, who partners with Byrne. Roy & Rory: the best young driver paired with the most promising technician. To break through, he has to emigrate to Britain, to F.Ford. The operation succeeds in part. In the sense that the Klomfass-Byrne duo does great, but soon they inevitably separate, with the driver who will be lost, burning his career with so much bad luck. In the grip of depression, he will die by suicide in 1998, at the age of 57. Divergent destinies, with no one to blame. While the technician with the sideburns, immediately noticed by Royale, produces the F.2 RP21, which in 1975 will prove to be the state of the art for the category, bringing Geoff Lees to the title. In that F.Ford, Ted and Bob Toleman, owners of a transport empire with a strong desire to enter F.2, also race for pure pleasure. They are the ones who ask Byrne to become the technical reference for the brand-new team. He enthusiastically accepts, but shortly after, Bob dies in an unfortunate accident, while Ted holds on. Meanwhile, the ground effect explodes.
In 1979, the Toleman team fields the new F.2 “ground effect” Ralt for British driver Brian Henton and an old March 782 for Rad Dougall, a promising South African. Rory learns from watching the first one and acts on the second, modifying it and turning it into a wing-car, adding open sidepods and miniskirts. The moral of the story is that Dougall manages to win a race, and Henton almost wins the title, losing it by a hair, in favor of Surer’s March 792.
So, Ted Toleman and manager Alex Hawkridge decide to take the big step: for 1980, they will build the Toleman F.2. And Byrne has the usual approach, with a stroke of genius that alone explains who he is. Consider this. At the end of 1979, the Federation also bans sliding miniskirts in F.2. Fixed skirts are allowed, but they must be as long (or short) as the driver’s seat. Rory thinks about it. And then he moves Byrne-style. The cockpit of the Toleman is strange because the seat goes lower, with a strange contraption that is immediately dubbed the “bowl,” which gains two centimeters, meaning running with miniskirts lower than the rivals, essentially undercutting them.
Well, the only driver who between the winter of 1979 and 1980 tests the Ralt and races with the Toleman is Siegfried Stohr, and he tells me: “Byrne had actually made a copy, a clone of the Ralt, but ingeniously adapted it to the new dictates. Driving it, you couldn’t even feel the difference between the two cars.” But looking at the final standings of the 1980 F.2, Byrne, Pirelli, Henton, and Warwick dominate. Byrne is like that. He thinks and acts at the work table just like Prost in his prime behind the wheel: watching him, it almost seems like he’s not doing anything special, but if you take the stopwatch, you realize that he doesn’t give rivals a chance.
After dominating F.2, Toleman entrusts him with the project of the F.1 Tg181, which he builds around the fragile and weak 4-cylinder Hart. In short, almost the end of the season, and Warwick and Henton still need to qualify. It happens at Monza, and the team celebrates. Byrne cuts it short: “It was a shitbox.” But in the 1982 British Grand Prix, Warwick is about to take the lead to the general dismay when a half-shaft breaks. The message is clear. Watch out.
Well, there are also things that make you laugh. At the end of the season, the Tg183 arrives, for which, for the first time in his life, Byrne attempts a bold solution: the double-offset rear wing. And here, too, there is a wonderful anecdote. Rory calls manager Hawkridge and explains the system to him in pencil. In the end, he says: “Any questions?” Alex replies, “One. And where do we put the engine?” Byrne, dismayed, replies, “Oh, right…”. He can also joke.
At the end of 1983, Warwick and Giacomelli approach the points zone, and for 1984, the Tg184 and Ayrton Senna arrive to replace Jack O’Malley. In Monaco, “Beco,” who almost wins in the hurricane, is second only because the race director Jacky Ickx prevents him from overtaking the struggling Alain Prost on McLaren-Porsche. Well, two more podiums, and the signal is clear. Byrne knows how to make top-class F.1. So the team is taken over by Benetton, and thanks to Pirelli tires, the first triumph also arrives, in Mexico 1986, with Berger at the wheel and Byrne in seventh heaven. A new phase begins in a young, well-funded, agile, and enterprising team.
In a team on the rise in 1989, Rory makes a mistake in the project and ends up out of the team in no time. That’s F.1. In his place, newcomer Flavio Briatore takes guru John Barnard, a Ferrari defector, but the relationship doesn’t work as it should, and triumphs are scarce. Meanwhile, Byrne got involved in the aborted Reynard F.1 project. Come on, everyone regrets it at Benetton, so Rory is recalled, and new partner Tom Walkinshaw arrives, bringing technician Ross Brawn, who had signed the Jaguar Xjr14, the most extreme prototype ever conceived.
Brawn and Byrne look at each other, smile, and shake hands. November 1991, it really starts again. Pay attention, for 1992, the flagship driver is the young Schumi, the on-track manager is Ross Brawn, and the designer is Rory Byrne: mark the trio, as, four years later, moved to Ferrari, it will give rise to the most successful combination in the history of the Prancing Horse.
With the Benetton B194-Ford, Michael is the 1994 champion, and with the B195-Renault, he repeats the following year, also securing the Constructors’ title. Bingo. At that point, Byrne is the top F.1 designer and also someone who is tired of the routine. Why? You’ll find out from the next line.
Let’s take a step back. In 1988, as a tourist, Rory takes a trip that changes his life, discovering Thailand in the company of Alex Hakridge, the former Toleman F.1 manager. Two weeks in the Andaman Islands deeply impress him with the beauty of the places. Consequently, he decides to return for a vacation. By the mid-’90s, he feels the need to learn the Thai language and goes to Oxford in search of a suitable teacher.
He arrives at lunchtime and decides to go to an ethnic restaurant. By a stroke of luck, he meets a very friendly waitress named Pornthip, who expresses enthusiasm about the idea of becoming his Thai teacher. The partnership works so well that the teacher becomes the love of Rory’s life. He decides to leave the F.1 scene in early 1996, at the end of the Benetton contract, to retire and open a scuba diving school in Phuket.
However, when everything is decided, the phone rings. It’s Michael Schumacher, who simply says, “Rory, you have to come to Ferrari and do the same thing you’ve already done at Benetton: replace John Barnard, collaborate with Ross Brawn, and create a winning car. The only change is that Jean Todt is overseeing everything.” Rory thinks about it, smiles, and responds, “I’ll see what I can do; let me think about it.”
In 1997, Byrne creates his first Ferrari, the F310B, an evolution of Barnard’s F310 used in 1996 by Schumi. The car loses the championship only in the last race at Jerez, but that’s okay. The F300 of 1998 wins on its debut with Schumi in Argentina and narrowly misses the title, losing it only due to a grid issue at Suzuka in the decisive challenge.
In 1999, the Ferrari would have been clearly at the top, but a broken leg for Schumi at Stowe, Silverstone, caused by a brake failure, shifts the responsibility to Eddie Irvine, who heroically gives in to Hakkinen’s McLaren again, only at Suzuka. It doesn’t matter. Byrne continues to get everything right. His Ferrari cars don’t invent anything, but they increasingly astonish the timers, elevated by Michael Schumacher‘s sublime performances. If the first Constructors’ Championship had arrived in 1999, the next year brings the double, with the Drivers’ Championship as well. Ferrari & Schumi reign until 2004 when Byrne delivers his most competitive, perfect, balanced, and beautiful F.1, the F2004.
Already at the end of 2001, he agrees to be interviewed for Peter Wright’s book, the inventor of ground effect, who writes a tome titled “Under the Skin of Championship-Winning F1-2000,” in which Rory reveals all the constructive details of the championship-winning Ferrari. On that occasion, Mauro Forghieri tells me, “Reading that book, I understood Byrne. He deserves everything he has because he’s great. I studied his Ferrari piece by piece, and I can tell you that engineering-wise, it’s a masterpiece made up of thousands and thousands of masterpieces, so many are the individual, infinitesimal, and refined components. His genius is not visible to the naked eye but by breaking down his work almost at a cellular level.” Better than that…
Also in that book, Byrne clarifies that, unlike other technicians, in life, he has never sought “The magic bullet,” that sudden intuition capable of making him stand out, but has always worked with a file, improving and paying attention to detail: “Winning or losing by a second doesn’t matter: what matters is being there at the front. There are bad victories and fabulous defeats; what counts is the improvement trend.” His story at Ferrari proves it. He adds, “Innovating is now made impossible by regulations. Once the ideal technician invented, now he refines.”
I find myself having lunch with Gordon Murray, and the South African acknowledges that “Rory Byrne is among the last capable of conceiving and designing an entire Formula 1 car and not just a part of it.”
Even before going into CAD (computer-aided design) and CAE (computer-aided engineering), Rory always starts with pencil and paper. Maybe he still does it now, as he remains a super consultant at Ferrari, with the role of “design and development consultant,” a task he resumed more vigorously in 2020 during a moment of identity crisis for Binotto’s Ferrari.
Hence his contribution to the Ferrari F1-75 of 2022. Just the splendid and immediate success from the beginning with Charles Leclerc leads the company’s leaders to renew his contract for another three years, until 2025. And here he is, still in Maranello during the holidays. Even if now he doesn’t work like in Schumi’s time, meaning 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with two appearances at Monza and Imola. Now he mainly engages remotely, with home working, for a hundred hours a year, but always to give his best to the Red Team.
Giorgio Serra recounts: “At a Ferrari Club Vignola party, in the heyday of the Schumi era, Rory Byrne showed up with O, or just O, or as October, which is the succinct last name of his very lovely wife. In the evening at dinner, I asked her to stand on the table while I drew her caricature, with Rory laughing like crazy, and she, very amused, made hints of classical dance steps. A giant drawing, almost life-size, came out, considering she is petite. The two of them left very happy, in the end, carrying their well-drawn caricature, rolled up.”
Do you want the truth? Rory Byrne is a legendary figure in Formula 1 but above all, a wonderful man. In South Africa, for the insurance sector, he studied a control system that puts a detector in the car, and if the driver behaves sensibly, it can reduce the installment cost by up to 40%. In Thailand, he is in real estate business with his wife – they have two children, Sean, 24, and James, 16 -, who manages a business in Phuket supervising the design and construction of homes that combine modernity with local classical style, in full respect of sustainability and integration with nature. Rory and Pornthip are very happy and active. To the point of collaborating with a health center, where Rory himself was engaged in transmitting his experiences and studies after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, as he revealed in an interview with “Window in Phuket.”
In this case too, Rory personally committed himself with his usual method, not inventing but refining. Identifying alternative therapies, balanced diets, and detoxification programs, which, accompanied by non-invasive therapies, stabilized his condition. He, a cricket enthusiast, even says that a knee locked for years has now improved. And this is how the world’s most experienced ground effect specialist also knows how to face life and its most delicate stumbling blocks from Thailand. One of the phrases with which he describes his farewell to Ferrari’s technical leadership at the end of 2004 says a lot about him: “After 2004, my goals changed. Until then, I won everything. After that, I changed the target: from there on, what matters is spending more time with friends and having a serene and happy life. I don’t necessarily have to win, but have fun.”
Those who have seen him around the Maranello Racing Department say that Rory Byrne has found an intelligent compromise: giving useful advice to bring Ferrari back to the top would really amuse him. So, once again, in his own way, he’s trying. Happy birthday, and thanks for everything, Mr. Rory Byrne.
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