John Barnard

John Barnard is an English engineer and racing car designer. At McLaren, he introduced the carbon-fiber composite chassis to Formula 1. In 1987, Ferrari poached him and set up a development facility to his specifications in England, the Guildford Technical Office (GTO), as he did not wish to work in Italy. The semi-automatic gearbox with steering-wheel-mounted paddles was developed there; Nigel Mansell won the first race with it in the Ferrari 640 in Brazil in 1989, and it soon became the standard across all Formula 1 cars.

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