In 1976, a turbocharged version of the classic DFV, called the DFX, was developed in California by Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing and the engine soon began winning USAC races. Over the past 30 years, through a series of turbo V8s, including the XB, XD and XF engines, Cosworth has become even more successful in Indy and Champ Car racing. In between, Cosworth has built successful engines for many other types of motor racing, done development projects for many of the world's major motor manufacturers, including Ford, General Motors and Mercedes-Benz, and established itself in an unchallenged position as the world's most successful, independent race engine-building and development company.
"Not being in
Formula One next year is heart-breaking to a lot of people here and it's having an impact on the number of people we employ," observed commercial director Ferguson. "We're trying desperately hard to find work for everybody inside the company. But if we can't achieve that, if we can't find work inside, we're trying to find jobs outside. But it is a major setback."
The
FIA's mandated freeze on
F1 engine development takes effect at the end of the season and Cosworth has already decided to lay off quite a few employees because of the effects of the engine freeze. But an additional portion of the workforce, including engineers, fabricators and assemblers, will now lose their jobs by the end of this month.
"It's the full spectrum," Ferguson confirmed. "They're very long-service people as well as young, thrusting people and every step on the way between the two. Because of the F1 engine freeze we were going to lose people anyway. Fifty per cent of the engines you build are for design and development activities, so fifty per cent of the parts you made, fifty
per cent of the assembling and testing was all stopping. We had almost finished sorting out the redundancy programme resulting from the freeze and now we've been hit with this latest situation. Frankly, it's left everybody here feeling a little numb."
