Dino Vittorio Marcellinus Toso

Formula One is a world of heroes. The drivers play out their battles on the track from week to week, but they are simple ciphers for the true heroes of each team - the invisible men and women in each factory, working every hour God sends to propel their team forwards.

On Wednesday 13th August, one of those silent heroes slipped peacefully from this world after a fight against cancer that defied all medical prognoses and redefined the strength of the human spirit. He was just 39 years old. And without him, our sport, and our world, are poorer places.

For Dino Toso, aerodynamics, or rather fluid dynamics, began in the water-filled fields around the south Holland city of Delft. As a small boy, he channelled water, made dams, learned about flow. His gift was an intuitive, practical understanding of what happens to air when it passes over a racing car.

He could see and feel what was right, and what was wrong, with any design; he took a special pride in making the cars his department developed not just things of devastating performance, but very real beauty too. That gift was anchored in, and learned from, the soil of his homeland. And from the very beginning, his mother knew him as an explorer and a discoverer.

"Why, why, why?" little Dino would ask as he encountered a new problem. "Why, why, why?" he would keep on asking, right up to his final days.

Studies in automotive design and electronics at Apeldoorn Technical College - including a final degree project that involved tuning Ferrari F40s - were followed by a post-grad degree in automotive engineering, then a move to Cranfield, UK, to study for his masters in aerodynamics and flight. All his savings went into the move - and he spoke little English.

He attended lectures and classes during the day, then went home to repeat the same lectures and lessons, an English-Dutch dictionary by his side, until he had mastered every single concept. He didn't have a name to propel him, or money; nothing but hard work and dedication. In the very truest sense of the word, he was a self-made man.

Gianni Morbidelli © LAT

Cranfield was duly followed by the routine of the Dutch national aerospace laboratory - until Dino realised he could spend his generous holiday allowance going motor racing. Overtime and night shifts were worked so he could store up holiday to go down to Italy and engineer touring cars. The racing bug had bitten, and the wind tunnel was soon a distant memory as he moved to Liguria in 1996, chasing tenths of a second on circuits around Europe as a race engineer for BMW Italy's Class 2 touring car team. The first driver he worked with was Gianni Morbidelli, who was drafted in to BMW's team for three races that season.

"It was one of Dino's first experiences with racing cars," remembers Morbidelli. "Right from the start, he was a very human, genuine guy and I understood he had a lot of quality. I was working with Jordan that year as test driver, so I said to Dino: 'There's not enough for you here - do you want to try and look for work in F1?' He was a little bit shy about it, but I spoke with Gary Anderson to tell him about this unbelievable guy I was working with.

"The real pleasure was to meet Dino again after two years: I realised he was so happy, so glad to be there and he appreciated what I had done, although to be honest I did practically nothing. Normally, relationships in motorsport happen because you're involved in the same job or because of business. But Dino was one of the most human people I ever met in this world."

Dino's interview at Jordan was conducted by Sam Michael (now Williams Technical Director) and Gary Anderson. "He told us he'd work every race and every test," recalls Sam. "Gary and I took one look at each other - and said we'd take him!" Although his first role was as a vehicle dynamics engineer (including data engineering at the track), a year later Dino had been promoted to the role of senior race engineer.

He worked with Damon Hill throughout 1998 and 1999, guiding the Briton to the team's famous first win the rains of Spa. For 2000, Jarno Trulli joined the team and began working with Dino. It marked the beginning of an enduring friendship.

By the end of 2000, Renault was recruiting - laying the foundations for the success that followed later in the decade. Dino joined the aero department, returning to his real engineering speciality, initially as a Senior Aerodynamicist, then Deputy Head of Aero, and finally promoted to Head of Department in August 2003 when John Iley left for Ferrari. "He found his true vocation with his position as Head of Aerodynamics at Renault," remembers Gary Anderson. "Dino brought a whole new direction to this area of development that ended up with two World Championships - which is no easy feat against the might of Ferrari and McLaren."

In April 2004, Dino - a super-fit, keen cyclist who had never smoked in his life - was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and the prognosis was stark: he had just six months to live. Several specialists around the world were unable to treat his case. But Dino being Dino, he refused to take 'no' for an answer.

Through his friend Jarno, Dino found a doctor in Paris who was prepared to try and treat his cancer - and he began to fight, to fight harder than anybody could have believed. The 2004 Spanish Grand Prix was the first race after the diagnosis and Jarno took his Renault to the podium. "Most of all I am pleased because I can dedicate this race to a friend of mine, Dino, who I'm sure is watching me on TV," said the Italian in the emotional post-race press conference.

"He has to fight a big battle, a very strong battle. We will battle together and I will bring him my trophy." That same trophy still stands proudly, high up alongside the podium champagne bottle, in Dino's living room today.

Jarno Trulli dedicates his 3rd place in the 2004 Spanish Grand Prix to Dino Toso © LAT

Later that summer, between Dino's bouts of chemo, I remember cycling through a riverside meadow in Oxford with him when he started talking. "We've found something really good for next year in the tunnel," he explained - his blue eyes sparkling at a discovery he knew would make a real difference. "It's the way we've designed the rear suspension and I don't think anybody else will find it."

The solution proved unique to Renault, with its design philosophy of a more rearward weight bias and matching aerodynamic balance. A few months later, Alonso completed his first laps at the wheel of the R25, on a cold morning in Valencia. When he returned to the garage, he didn't just get out of the car; he leapt out and did a little jig, before resuming his game-face and giving feedback to the engineers. He knew that Dino and his colleagues had given him a car that could win the world championship.

2005 was variously described as a season that McLaren threw away, or a season where Renault played cruise-and-collect to win the world title. But within the team, it could never be seen like that. The team celebrated the drivers' and constructors' championships in real style at Blenheim Palace in early December. A plan had been hatched for a kind of "people's choice" awards until it was realised that the superior numbers of the Aero department would allow them to rig the voting.

Instead, just one man collected an award that evening - and 1,000 people rose in unison to applaud Dino as he took to the stage, a powerful symbol of the team's victory. Yet he would take no credit for himself, accept nothing remarkable in what he had conquered; it was the work of the team that mattered. It had been the same when he received the Race Tech Aerodynamicist of the Year Award a few weeks earlier.

"Nowadays, there is no one-man band work. It's all teamwork, all the more so in Formula One," Dino explained on collecting his award. "So I am honoured to accept this award in the name of my team."

In the following months, when the cancer seemed under control after intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, he spoke of how his illness had made him stronger, better, at his job. It had given him a paradoxical kind of balance, and brought a perspective he hadn't previously possessed. It was, in some sense, a kind of personal performance development; and from adversity, he had found the strength to transform his fight into something positive.

Self-pity never, ever featured in Dino's battle - it was an emotion he had no time for. He was constantly moving onwards, upwards, towards the next challenge; always pushing. The last text message I received from him came just after Heikki Kovalainen had won the Hungarian GP two weeks ago. It was a simple smiley face at seeing a good guy doing so well.

Fernando Alonso won the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix and two World Championships in a Dino Toso Renault © LAT

Nature, though, is savage and amoral. Dino's life was about the relationship between science and nature - how, and if, science could control nature, be it airflow or disease. He was an explorer, a seeker, and that brings with it immense respect for the unknown. He knew that when the disease returned, his battle would be even harder. And so it proved. Yet to his final days, he was smiling, joking, laughing; and when the end came, it did so peacefully on his own terms.

Four years and three months passed between Dino's diagnosis and his death. Having been given six months to live, he defied the combined wisdom of medical science to live nearly nine times longer. In that time, his F1 cars took 17 race wins, 17 pole positions, eight fastest laps and two world championships. He married, had a beautiful baby daughter who brought him untold joy in his final months, and most of all learned that life was about so much more than cars going round in circles - even when they do so quicker than all the others.

By his own admission, the last five years of his life were the very best - in spite of his disease. The word 'hero' is probably overused but Dino Toso was a great man and a true, silent hero. He met triumph and disaster head on, and treated those 'two impostors' just the same. It is the very greatest of understatements to say he will be sorely missed.