When Ferrari opened a factory in England: the John Barnard experiment. A deep dive into Ferrari’s failed British experiments with John Barnard in Guildford and Shalford.

John Barnard and Ferrari
John Barnard’s insights have shaped the history of Formula 1 and motorsport, just think of the two most famous ones: the first carbon fiber composite chassis in 1981 with McLaren, and the semi-automatic gearbox on the 1989 Ferrari. And to think that the English ‘Genius’ didn’t even have a university degree, having only earned a diploma from Watford College of Technology before entering the racing world at just 22 years old with Lola Cars.

By the mid-1980s, he was the most sought-after designer in Formula 1, having drawn the phenomenal McLaren-Porsche cars that won championships with Niki Lauda (1984) and Alain Prost (1985 and 1986). Then came Ferrari.

Piero Ferrari recalled to Leo Turrini some years ago: “My biggest regret was hiring John Barnard at the end of 1986. I was the one who convinced my father, who was still alive, of the need to entrust a great outside designer. But Barnard never integrated into our culture—it was a huge mistake.” It was sporting director Marco Piccinini who contacted Barnard, who was open to joining the Prancing Horse, but under specific conditions.

John Barnard’s demands
John Barnard himself recently recounted the negotiations to Motorsport Magazine: “My decision to leave McLaren had developed over time. Ferrari started waving substantial checks at me, adding more zeros continuously. I decided to take the leap and go to Ferrari. I made it clear I would only accept the job if I could stay in England. I wouldn’t bring my family to Italy, and they agreed. Most importantly, I had to have full control of production because their carbon fiber facilities weren’t up to the standards I expected or wanted, and they didn’t even have a proper wind tunnel.”

That’s where the idea of an English base, parallel to Maranello, came from—endorsed by Enzo Ferrari.

Barnard enforced a true revolution, starting with lunch. He told it like this: “Piccinini asked me how things worked at McLaren. I told him lunch usually meant a quick coffee and sandwich, fifteen minutes, and then back to work. At Ferrari at the time, they brought out tablecloths and bottles of Lambrusco. He asked if I thought it wise to eliminate that. I said yes, and the newspapers wrote that it was my decision. But I didn’t care—it had to be done. You couldn’t work that way anymore.”

The Guildford Ferrari of 1987
About 60km southwest of London, the town of Guildford in Surrey was chosen as the site of what was grandly presented as Ferrari’s “technological antenna.”
Communication between the GTO (Guildford Technical Office) and Maranello was immediately difficult and mostly handled by fax. Davide Terletti recalled: “I’ll never forget the fax signed by the Commendatore himself: ‘The new engine is ready, where’s the chassis?’”

Every idea was strenuously protected and defended by John Barnard, who justified it by saying he wanted to develop them over time. Time that wasn’t available. In hindsight, the Englishman recalled: “At Ferrari it doesn’t take much for people to turn against you. It’s hard to explain, but the Italian media puts the team under pressure, week after week, and that’s tough to handle. Some time ago, I had dinner with Adrian Newey and told him: ‘You’re not going to Ferrari, are you?’ and, as we’ve seen, he decided it wasn’t for him.”

Carlo Marincovich wrote in La Repubblica: “When he signed with Ferrari in 1986, it took him over 600 days to build a car that, as its first brilliant result, melted the engine because the radiators didn’t work. When this legendary Ferrari (nicknamed ‘the duck’) finally started performing well, it was already 1990 and Barnard had already been shown the door.”

Not by chance, Cesare Fiorio dubbed the Guildford experiment “the factory of excuses,” due to the constant back-and-forth of blame between Maranello and Britain: the car didn’t work, and no one took responsibility. By the end of 1989, Barnard’s contract was not renewed.

…and the Shalford one in 1993
Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, who found himself leading a deeply troubled Ferrari, thought of recalling John Barnard in 1993. In the meantime, the ‘Genius’ had moved to Benetton and was working with Rory Byrne, Ross Brawn, and Michael Schumacher—faces that would later become familiar at Maranello.

The English base was reintroduced, this time in Shalford—160 km from Guildford—dubbed by insiders as “British Ferrari” and officially called the Ferrari Design Department. The previous GTO factory had in fact been sold to Ron Dennis to build road-going McLaren cars.

Around forty engineers from the Prancing Horse were based in England. Fax machines were gone, and the Internet was beginning to spread: “One of Maranello’s problems has always been information leaks. That’s not good. Now, everything we design in Shalford can be monitored in real-time on the racing department’s computers, and that convinced Jean Todt of the validity of our setup,” John Barnard told Rombo.

But even the second Barnard stint didn’t work out, and the English designer left Ferrari in 1997: “I submitted realistic budgets, and Ferrari always tried to cut them by 15%. When it became clear that Michael Schumacher would join, Jean Todt told me to buy anything we needed. I pointed out we should have done that three years earlier to be ready for his arrival. Then Jean told me he wanted to bring everything back to Maranello and asked if I wanted to go too, as technical director. I replied, ‘No thanks.’ So we discussed who to hire and Rory Byrne’s name came up. I said, ‘Well, if you take him, you’d better take Ross Brawn too.’”

The Shalford FDD was sold to John Barnard himself for just over one million dollars. He renamed it B3 Engineering, which permanently closed in 2008, after collaborations with Tom Walkinshaw’s Arrows and even in MotoGP for the Proton 500 team led by Kenny Roberts.

Shortly before that, in April 1996, at the dawn of the Schumacher era, Carlo Marincovich harshly criticized the Englishman’s Ferrari tenure in La Repubblica, in an article titled “Wizard Barnard, for how much longer?”, in which he asked: “Barnard can’t be fired because Ferrari would be left in total emptiness—without a designer. One of the tasks of the so-called Wizard, from the very beginning (ten years ago), was to build a staff, preferably Italian, capable of making Ferrari self-sufficient in terms of chassis, aerodynamics, and F1 car design. That didn’t happen, and even today Ferrari remains dependent on a ‘Wizard,’ his slow pace, his temper, his ponderings. A fine mess. Relations between Maranello and Guildford (where the ‘Wizard’ thinks) can’t be so good anymore. Do the two Ferraris (Italian and English) even talk to each other? And if they do, about what? Love? Judging by the results, the ten-year-long amorous conversation doesn’t seem to have yielded much. Every year it’s the same story: no time, we’re late, we need to understand, we’ll see. Benetton in two weeks almost turned around their poor Melbourne performance. At Ferrari, Barnard still needs to see… understand… study. Is it too far-fetched to think that people in Maranello aren’t so happy anymore?”