The innovator behind gadgets that turned Williams and McLaren into champions

He’s worked with Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna and Mika Häkkinen as well as Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, but this quietly spoken and unassuming engineer has flown below the public radar for much of his Formula 1 career. Nevertheless, Paddy Lowe has had a hand in winning 12 world championships 
as well as over 150 grands prix.

From active suspension to McLaren’s ‘F-duct’ – the banned invention which paved the way for the Drag Reduction System – Lowe has been a restless innovator. Now, as head of Zero Petroleum, he’s creating
fuel out of thin air…

GP Racing: Paddy, you were born in Kenya, weren’t you?

Paddy Lowe: Yes. My parents actually lived in Sudan. They were missionaries. My dad trained local people to be clergymen and my mother was a doctor. There were complications at birth, so she was airlifted to Nairobi and I was born there. And when I was about two years old, the Sudanese army came – they didn’t want Europeans in the country anymore – and we went to live in Uganda.

It was an interesting childhood. My brother and I used
to cycle around all the time. I actually rebuilt an old bicycle
for myself – because we didn’t have much money, almost nothing we had was new. So we found an old bike and made
it functional, and then I learnt how to ride it.

GPR: How did motorsport come into your life?

PL: At that time there was this East African Safari Rally – it went through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania. It used to go right past our house. I remember – because sometimes it was at night and I wasn’t allowed out – you would hear these cars coming and going every two minutes. And I used to follow it on the radio, I’d have all the merchandise you could get.

Lowe is the founder of Zero Fuels, a growing synthetic fuel manufacturer

Photo by: Andy Hone

Then we moved and I went to school in Ireland for a couple of years before my parents settled in Kent. And for as long as I can remember, I was into rebuilding things – bicycles, motorbikes, lawnmowers, anything with an engine. People used to come to me at school to fix their mopeds. I actually made a bit of money that way!

If there was an F1 race on TV I’d watch it – but it wasn’t something I really followed. When I finished university, one of my friends said, “Why don’t you work in F1?” And I thought, “Well, they’re making the cars, so they must need engineers.”

GPR: Obviously!

"That 1988 season was a complete disaster.
The engine was a catastrophe, the car wouldn’t cool, everything was super unreliable" Paddy Lowe

PL: I wrote to three teams and the only one that replied was Williams, and it was from Frank Dernie. He needed people to help with the active suspension. They decided to race it in 1988 but they realised they didn’t have anyone to do it. Well, they had about two people, but they thought they needed more.

It wasn’t my first job. I’d worked as an engineer before but I came to Williams to apply myself in a completely different context. The easy part was that they didn’t know what they were doing, so there were no other experts to judge our plans and ideas. They also hired a guy called Steve Wise and together we built up the whole electronics and software department.

GPR: Do you remember your first day at the track?

PL: I think it was late 1987, with a mule car. It was Nigel Mansell’s first time back in a car after his back injury in Japan. Day one, run one: we’re on the pitwall and David Brown, his race engineer, says: “First time around, he’s going to come out of that corner backwards. I bet you.” And Nigel did! Because he always pushes. Nigel just didn’t know how not to push.

Lowe's first race with Williams was the 1988 Brazilian GP, but afterwards he spent a long time away from the track

Photo by: Motorsport Images

My first race was Rio in 1988. I went to all the races until we took the active suspension out in the middle of that season. And then I stayed at the factory for two or three years because we had to redevelop it. Nigel was so happy to get it off the car at Silverstone.

That 1988 season was a complete disaster.
The engine was a catastrophe, the car wouldn’t cool, everything was super unreliable, including this suspension system – and then the performance was weird, nobody really knew what was going on. Everything was just wrong.



GPR: Why did it take so long to redevelop it?

PL: When Frank Dernie hired us at the end of 1987, we tried to make the system they already had a little more robust. But it wasn’t our system, we hadn’t designed it or built it. So what we did in 1988 was build all our own computers, software, electrical systems – from scratch. So the first real
use of all that technology was the 1991 car, where we ran the first automatic gearbox. 

GPR: So you spent all those years away from the track?

PL: Exactly. I don’t think I went to any races during that period. Just the tests. I was running a test team. We had our own truck, our own car, our own mechanics. And we used to go down to the Pembrey circuit in Wales on a regular basis to test the active suspension, all our systems, electronics, gearbox, and a lot of other things which would come for 1992. By ’93 they had anti-lock brakes. All these things were dependent on the platform, so it was the platform that required most of the work rather than the project itself.

GPR: That 1992 season must have felt incredible.

PL: You have to put it into context, that McLaren was winning everything. You just couldn’t imagine what you had to do to beat McLaren. But we were making progress on all fronts. Aero with Adrian Newey, we’d got a very good engine from Renault. And then we had the active suspension, which worked properly. And then the icing on the cake was that we invented traction control at the end of ’91.

Lowe, second from right, had a key role in developing the active suspension on the FW14B that helped Nigel Mansell to win the 1992 world title

Photo by: LAT Photographic

And the active suspension, we pretty much proved it with back-to-back tests, was worth about a second per lap of performance. And then the traction control was worth another second of performance. It was a simple system, very elegant.

We tested it for the first time that winter at Paul Ricard with Damon Hill. I wrote the algorithm, one line of code. It was a run in the middle of the day, sort of, “Yeah, let’s try this slightly crazy idea that the guys in the corner have come up with.” In those days F1 was a mechanical sport. We were the geeks in the corner with wires and software. They didn’t trust us very much! But we managed to convince them to put it on the run plan.

We sent him out and he came back and said, “I can feel it working. But it’s holding me back.” And we said, “Yes, it is. But you’re a second faster.”

"This car really suited Nigel because it had massive performance, but you really had to believe in it. You had to commit to corners almost with blind faith that the downforce would arrive" Paddy Lowe

GPR: How did the race drivers like all these systems?

PL: They thought it was awesome. The other element that came into 1992, which was also transformative, was that Nigel had spent the winter deciding this was his year. In ’91 he and Riccardo [Patrese] were pretty close. But over the winter, Nigel had lost a lot of weight. When he got on the scales he was lighter than Riccardo – and that just destroyed Riccardo, because he thought it was his advantage.

This car really suited Nigel because it had massive performance, but you really had to believe in it. You had to commit to corners almost with blind faith that this downforce would arrive. That perfectly played into Nigel’s hands. His whole philosophy of driving is, “I’ll push it to the limit and beyond, and I’m so skilled that I will pull it back if it’s wrong.” That’s how he drives. He had unbelievable reaction speeds.

PLUS: How Red 5's 1992 F1 throwback wowed Goodwood

So all that came together and suddenly we were just massively quicker than McLaren, to the point where you just couldn’t believe it. McLaren hadn’t done any of the same track tests over the winter as anybody else so, when we came to Kyalami, nobody had any idea how quick they were. And every session we were just faster. We just kept saying “they’re sandbagging” because it was impossible to contemplate.

Lowe picks out the 1992 Brazilian GP as one of his favourite memories, as McLaren couldn't live with the Williams dominance

Photo by: Motorsport Images

One of my favourite memories is when we came to Brazil, the second race, they brought six cars because they thought something had gone drastically wrong with the new one. They brought three old cars and three new cars, and at one point almost all of them were broken on the track! We were having so much fun because they were beating us for so long…

PLUS: Why an era-ending McLaren's pioneering traits couldn't halt Mansell's juggernaut

GPR: And then you moved to McLaren! Why?

PL: I did six years with Williams. That’s quite a long time. I thought I’d achieved a lot. I thought there was an opportunity to develop in terms of my position in the team – and, frankly, the salary. With all respect to Frank [Williams], he wasn’t big on getting out his chequebook – whereas Ron [Dennis] was the opposite. I got a decent pay rise, but it was more than that.

GPR: Ayrton Senna went the other way at about the same time. You had the chance to work with him for a short time, right?

PL: I overlapped with Ayrton for six months. I actually came with a very interesting project, we were developing a power braking system. I know that sounds bizarre because it’s standard on every road car, but it wasn’t on any F1 car except Williams, who had full ABS that year.

But we didn’t have the time to do ABS, we just did the power assistance. And I developed this system at McLaren, knowing that it would be illegal for the following year, 1994. But it was worth almost a second a lap when we tested it at Imola in early summer [’93].

We designed it, knowing we only had a window of three races to take advantage of it. And I’m personally very proud that this system helped him win his last few races.

When I arrived at McLaren, the mindset in the company was ‘we just need to find that little thing we were doing wrong’. And it took them quite a few years to realise it wasn’t just that. You have to get from denial to acceptance before you can rebuild.

Lowe switched Williams for McLaren in 1993 and helped send Senna off the other way with a win in Adelaide

Photo by: Sutton Images

GPR: How much did Adrian’s arrival help this process?

PL: Adrian coming to McLaren was obviously a really good step on the aerodynamic side. But I think it’s the same now. People think Red Bull will be lost without Adrian, but there are hundreds of people behind him.

I’ve worked with him at Williams, I’ve worked with him at McLaren. He’s a great part of the team. But I wouldn’t say he’s a team player, actually. He’s a great contributor to the team and a great aerodynamicist. But then other people – and this was true in my time at McLaren – worked around Adrian to make it work and to deliver the car and performance in all areas.

Adrian was also a big part of the improvements at McLaren, but there are other things we brought in, large and small. A larger one was brake steering...

"Nowadays Copse is an easy flat, but back then you had to lift and change down a gear or two. But Mika would tap the brakes on the inside at the right point, just to twist the car a bit more – at 170mph – and turn!"
Paddy Lowe

GPR: Of course, the secret pedal...

PL: That was also worth like a second a lap! That was a great project because it was so simple and yet everyone thought it was so complicated. And again, it was a bit like Nigel and the active suspension. You needed a driver like Mika [Hakkinen] to exploit it. David [Coulthard] in the other car only exploited it because he understood what Mika had done.

With Mika there was no instruction, we just sent him out. I said, “Here’s a pedal, this is what it does, press it when you want to”. I think the first time we tested it was at Silverstone. Nowadays Copse is an easy flat, but back then you had to lift and change down a gear or two. But Mika would tap the brakes on the inside at the right point, just to twist the car a bit more – at 170mph – and turn!

I loved working with Mika. Ultimately, I think he was better than Michael [Schumacher]. He’d beat him on equal terms. But the difference was that Mika had two championships and that was enough. He didn’t want to do anymore. And Michael went on and got all the statistics.

Lowe relished working with Hakkinen, who was denied a first win at Silverstone in 1997 by engine failure, but went on to claim world titles in 1998-99

Photo by: Sutton Images

GPR: You said McLaren was more than just a pay rise. What was the main attraction?

PL: I started as head of research and development, running all these R&D programmes, designing all these kinds of new systems, but also new infrastructure – like the simulator. We started working on that in about 1998 – a full 10 years before the simulator helped Lewis [Hamilton] win a championship as an active tool in 2008. And imagine the number of people who said “Oh, this will never work, waste of time”... including Adrian, by the way. And now you wouldn’t be an F1 team without a simulator.
 
GPR: Then you succeeded Adrian as McLaren’s tech director.

PL: I was actually technical director when Adrian left at the end of 2005, but they didn’t call me that until I insisted on it. What was really great was the opportunity for the team to come through and show what they could do. The 2007 car was our first car from scratch. We put everything into that car: all the lessons we learnt, all the freedoms we had up our sleeves or weren’t allowed to do.

And we really developed this marginal gains approach where every single millisecond was counted and put into the programme. I remember we brought a piece – I carried it in
my rucksack! – to Monaco. In the wind tunnel it was worth about 80 milliseconds or something, and we put it on the car for Saturday and we got pole position with a lower margin,
so that piece theoretically made the difference.

GPR: What did you like most about working at Mercedes?

PL: It was just great to have this performance. I liked working with Toto [Wolff]. He’s an interesting character, but it’s fun to work with him.

The engine was fantastic. Andy Cowell and his team did a mind-blowing job. But in terms of the car, nothing really comes to mind... Mercedes came up with that steering thing a couple of years ago, didn’t they? What did they call it?

Lowe enjoyed working with Wolff during a period of success for Mercedes at the start of the turbo hybrid era

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

 GPR: Dual-axis steering.

PL: That’s the latest thing I can think of. That kind of innovation has been a big part of my career. I’d be pissed off if somebody came up with an innovation in another team.

I was quite proud of bringing new things into the sport. And then it was kind of a badge of honour when they got banned. Whereas now I don’t think there are many opportunities.

"We’re not going to stop needing liquid fuels, but we’re going to have to make them sustainable. It’s very exciting to be working on that journey"
Paddy Lowe

Most of them come from changes in the regulations, like the new power unit for 2026. But that’s not really an innovation. I think the rulebook is so thick and so tight that I can’t talk about my time at Mercedes in terms of “We did this spectacular thing”. There have been a lot of micro-innovations that would be too boring to talk about.

GPR: Do you still get the same thrill from working on sustainable fuels?

PL: I love energy. F1 is really a manifestation of energy and that’s what creates the drama. We’re not going to stop needing liquid fuels, but we’re going to have to make them sustainable. And it’s just very exciting to be working on that journey. And I think in 2030 people will look back and say, “Why didn’t we do all this earlier?”

It’s not just about the climate, it’s about a whole new model for energy where you don’t dig it out of the ground. We need to move to circularity in general, in everything. We’re a consumer civilisation – and that can’t survive. We need to move to circular systems, and what better place to start than with energy?

Lowe laments that there are fewer opportunities to introduce novel ideas in modern F1 with the tightly-governed ruleset

Photo by: Luca Martini

GPR: So you’ve gone from fixing old bicycles in Uganda – through Formula 1 – to fixing the world…

PL: I never thought of it that way! I just love doing new things, learning. Here I’m learning chemistry. Real chemistry! And I like disruption, in a way. You look at all the innovations in F1 – they were disruptive technologies at the time. I just love that.

I loved coming into the paddock with a new thing on the car, knowing how pissed everyone would be that we’d done it and they hadn’t. The F-duct was probably the best. We designed it with no moving parts.

But at first, of course, everyone was convinced there were moving parts in it, which is illegal.
So they were all banging on Charlie Whiting’s door, “These blokes are cheating!” It took them weeks to figure out there
was another way to do it.

And I think we’re doing a bit of that with fuel now. Because most people say, “Well, you can’t make oil out of thin air.” But that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Lowe hopes that synthetic fuels can become an important aspect of F1 in future

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images