Keith Duckworth was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1933 and educated at Giggleswick School. After national service in the RAF, ending as a navigator, he studied engineering at Imperial College London, taking a BSc in 1955. He joined Lotus as a gearbox engineer, but fell out with Colin Chapman over the fix for the unreliable “Queerbox”.
In 1958 he and Mike Costin founded Cosworth. Success in Formula Junior in the early 1960s financed a move from Friern Barnet to Edmonton and then Northampton, and Chapman persuaded Ford to pay for what became the DFV. Chapman wanted the engine to be a stressed part of the chassis, bolted to the monocoque tub, an arrangement that has been standard in Formula One since. The DFV debuted in the Lotus 49 at the 1967 Dutch Grand Prix, with Graham Hill on pole and Jim Clark winning. It was made available to all teams in 1968, and its last win came at Detroit in 1983.
Duckworth also led the V6 turbo project of the 1980s. He sold his majority stake in Cosworth in 1980 but stayed as chairman until 1987, when he became President. His son Roger worked on the YB engines used in the Sierra RS Cosworth and Escort RS Cosworth. Duckworth died in Northampton in December 2005.
