Racecar Engineering staff were saddened to learn of the death at age 79 of Peter Wright, who had fulfilled the role of technical consultant at the publication for many years.
Peter shouldered the responsibility of checking our features and columns and was quick to offer his opinions.
He loved working with young writers and ensured that the information was well researched and accurate.
His own contributions to the magazine, the most recent of which appeared in our September 2025 issue, offered a fascinating insight into the workings of a great engineering mind.
Peter had many milestones in his career as a mechanical engineer. A notable one was the implementation of ground effect aerodynamics on the Lotus T78, which was honed and carried through to the Lotus T79.
That car delivered Mario Andretti the Formula 1 World Championship title in 1978 and kick-started a ground-effect war that ultimately led to the concept being banned in the early 1980s.
Peter always denied that he was the father of ground effect.
It is a term that was already well known in the world of aircraft, and Jim Hall of Chaparral was also working on the same idea in the US motorsport scene. Peter often said between them, they killed racing.
That wasn’t true, but it certainly placed an emphasis on advanced floor design, and he was tickled that it came back to F1 again in 2022.
Peter accidentally found the phenomenon in the wind tunnel of Imperial College London, and then spent months perfecting it with clay, tape and cardboard.
The large tunnels through the sidepods of the Lotus 78 channelled the air, but skirts were needed to stop air coming into the tunnels, a development that increased their efficiency. Finding an efficient skirt was highly challenging.
Peter was integral to the rise of Lotus and enjoyed working alongside the inquisitive mind of Colin Chapman. That was not only in racing, but also in flight and road cars.
Innovation was key, whether it was self-propelled flight (a disastrous folly), or making racecars faster.
Peter had the playground in which he could investigate new concepts, backed up by Chapman’s underlying drive for ideas.
Other notable achievements were early attempts at active suspension, for which he needed to write his own computer program, and later, at the FIA, the implementation of Balance of Performance which was brought to GT racing under the guidance of then president Max Mosley.
Peter was also a key member of the FIA Institute, with a brief to make racing safer and again, he was given resource and opportunity.
He was called in to work with leading engineers at the end of the 1990s following blow-over incidents and low-level rolls involving Le Mans prototypes.
It was, he said, like a table. The cars moved closer to the edge, so he would move them back to the middle. He had the authority, the skill and the knowledge of aerodynamics to lead a group of eminent engineers towards a solution.
In later years, Peter was fascinated by the rise of electric mobility, and we often argued over whether or not that was the right way forward.
He remained convinced that this was the powertrain type of the future and it was highly unlikely that I would ever persuade him otherwise, but it was always fun to try.
Self-driving cars were also a topic of discussion. If a crash was inevitable, what would a self-driving car do?
Simple, he figured. In the blink of an eye the car would connect to the internet, find the cheapest outcome, and have that accident. It was a tongue in suggestion cheek, of course.
As technical consultant of Racecar Engineering, Peter was always at the end of a telephone line for a general conversation and was quick to reply to emails.
Anything that was controversial, or needed an expert eye, went to him.
He was fascinated in 2014 when Formula 1 and sportscar racing both went to hybrid powertrains, and it was a true learning experience to watch him at the FIA World Endurance Championship pre-season test that year interrogating the leading team engineers on what they were really doing.
He remained closely connected to F1, and often wrote columns giving his view on the state of play.
The agreement was always that he would only write about things that interested him. Sometimes he would come up with ideas from his own investigations, others he would respond if asked, and only rarely said no.
His expertise was matched by his kindness and his humour. He never lost his desire to learn.
The last thing we were trying to sort out was the FIA-held documents of the Lotus T88, particularly the Appeal following the 1981 Argentine Grand Prix, and its ban after the British Grand Prix.
Technically he believed that it was acceptable, but he wanted to see the FIA dossier and finally understand the real reasons why the car was banned.
There are not many like Peter left, a link to a golden age of innovation.
Racecar Engineering extends its deepest sympathies to his wife, Dorothy, family and friends.
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