This exceptional level of performance was established from the outset by founders Duckworth and Costin. Duckworth was a highly-motivated, tart-tongued engineer and engine designer, a true genius and beguiling drinking companion who could hold the entire design of an engine in his head and commit it to paper, piece by piece. One of Duckworth's great prides was to be able to produce a prototype that was as close to complete and functional as possible, a rare feat that Cosworth has been able to come close to achieving time and again.
Costin was an equally brilliant, immensely practical engineer, capable of building pieces and getting things done. He was also an extremely competent racing driver with a record of success in sportscars and small formula cars. Costin was Colin Chapman's right-hand man at the fledgling Lotus team from 1956-'62 and once beat Jim Clark to the pole for a Formula Junior race at Goodwood in 1960. Duckworth also worked for Lotus in 1957 and '58 before forming his own little, engine-building company in a former Lotus workshop
in partnership with Costin who continued to earn a living by working for Lotus for a few more years.
Cosworth started in business by building racing versions of the Ford Anglia 105E four-cylinder engine for the new Formula Junior category introduced in Europe in 1958. The company's first win was scored by no less a man than
Jim Clark, the great champion-to-be who drove a Ford/Cosworth-powered Formula Junior Lotus 18 to victory at Goodwood in March of 1960. Over the next four or five years, Cosworth engines dominated Formula Junior, F3 and then F2, instantly becoming the most successful engine builder in these
categories.
Cosworth's
F1 debut came in spectacular style in June of 1967 when Clark won the Dutch Grand Prix driving a brand new Lotus 49 powered by an equally new Cosworth DFV V8. The legendary DFV and its derivatives went on to dominate F1 over the next fifteen years, winning all but two world championships and 155 races through 1983. Over the following 20 years Cosworth designed and built 14 more F1 engines, including a turbo V6, an experimental V12, more V8s, a ten-year series of V10s and, finally, this year's 2.4 litre V8 to the
FIA's latest rules.
