TRIBUTE

Motorsport UK was saddened to learn of the death of Peter Wright earlier this month.

Primarily an aerodynamicist and engineer, Peter was responsible for developing active suspension and the first ground effect Formula 1 car, the Lotus 79, during his career with Team Lotus. It led to the introduction of the‘ ground-effect’ chassis in 1977 – redefining motorsport aerodynamics. He also pioneered the early adoption of carbon fibre chassis technology, data acquisition, and created the first active suspension system.

Another of his significant contributions to motorsport is Balance of Performance which now underpins all GT, sports car and touring car racing around the world.

Peter joined the FIA as technical advisor in 1995, after which he also became head of the FIA Safety Commission for several years, when he helped develop the HANS device and the halo now used in Formula 1 and other single-seater championships globally.

While fulfilling this technical role, Peter met SRO’ s founder and CEO, Stéphane Ratel, and the FIA’ s then president, Max Mosley, all of whom worked together during the FIA GT Championship’ s spectacular GT1 era in 1997 and‘ 98.

Porsche’ s controversial 911 GT1, which joined the BPR series in 1996, initially highlighted the danger posed by‘ homologation special’ GT cars before an unchecked arm’ s race between major manufacturers resulted in FIA GT’ s demise two years later. It rebounded, first with GT2 cars and then under the Super Racing Weekend moniker, but history was in danger of repeating itself towards the end of 2004 when Maserati unleashed the MC12: essentially a purposebuilt race car homologated for the road.

“ At one point I thought that was it,” said Ratel.“… the whole thing would collapse because I wouldn’ t have a grid.” Mosley however tasked Wright with developing a solution he had previously proposed.

“ I sometimes wonder how on earth I got involved in GT racing because it wasn’ t my field at all,” Wright recalled in 2017,“ but recently I found an email that I had sent to Max Mosley a year or two before, saying that the only way to run GT racing is to do Balance of Performance( BoP) based on simulation,”.

Data from the MC12’ s race outings at the end of 2004 was validated with post-season testing alongside the Prodrivebuilt Ferrari 550 Maranello that had established itself as the class’ standout performer up to that point.

The results, implementation and ongoing developments duly restricted the MC12’ s inherent advantages, which helped four manufacturers to win races in 2005. Maserati claimed the teams’ title via its crack Vitaphone outfit, but it was a Ferrari squad – Larbre Competition – that won the drivers’ crown.

With the merits of BoP proven, the FIA GT Championship name returned in 2006.

Peter was an SAE Fellow, a founding board member of road safety organisation EuroNCAP, a former advisor to the FIA Institute for Motor Sport Safety and Sustainability, and chairman of several major FIA safety investigation panels.

“ Peter Wright did the difficult stuff and he’ s brilliant at that sort of thing. He ran the whole balancing exercise, and it worked.”

Max Mosley

JEP

JEP

The Maserati MC12 GT car became the catalyst of BoP, developed by Peter Wright

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Wright developed ground effect aerodynamics at Team Lotus

Revolution- November 2025