Keith Duckworth, co founder of Cosworth Engineering, died on Sunday, 18th December, 2005 at the age of 72.

Keith was once shown around the engine department of one of the Detroit Big Three. As the world's most successful designer of racing engines, everyone hung on his every word. Someone asked him what he thought of their engines and Keith said they were crap. Consternation all round. Keith said, "Imagine you are the gas inside a cylinder. You've got a bloody great piston coming up your chuff and you want the quickest way out. Have you provided the quickest way out?"

That was typical Duckworth. He was blunt and didn't waste words. He also had the ability to take something as complicated as thermodynamics and reduce it to a simple image which a child could understand. It was that clarity of thought which made him such a formidable designer. Provided you did not pretend to know more than you actually did, he would take infinite pains to explain things.

Keith was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1933 and was educated at Giggleswick Grammar School, a boarding school in Yorkshire. After National Service in the RAF, he went to Imperial College, London.

He did not cover himself with glory and managed only a 'Pass' degree, the lowest level, but then, so he told me, he was more interested in working things out for himself rather than learning what other people had established. One of his lecturers recognised his ability and recommended that he go on to do a PhD, which is almost unheard of for someone getting a mere pass. Keith said, "That was a rare moment of clarity for an academic."

Keith bought a Lotus Mk VI kit which he fitted with a Coventry Climax FWA engine. After two or three races he realised a) he would never be World Champion and b) racing was too expensive for him. He had become one of the volunteers who helped out at Lotus and, in 1957, joined the company full time, where he specialised in transmissions, in particular, he tried to sort out the first Lotus 'Queerbox'.

His immediate boss at Lotus was Graham Hill who was all bull and damn all knowledge. Keith never did like Graham, but he formed a close friendship with Mike Costin who was the Technical Director at Lotus. Years later, Keith would say, "Mike is an intuitive engineer. I would explain a problem to him, he would run it through his mind and then say whether or not it would work. He could never say why, but ninety nine times from a hundred, he was spot on. It was like feeding information into a computer."

In 1958 Keith and Mike set up Cosworth Engineering. Keith was not happy at the way Colin Chapman operated and would merely say that he did not think Chapman was ethical, he would not be drawn on details. At first, Keith was Cosworth's one full time employee, Mike had to serve out a five year contract with Lotus. Forget what you may read elsewhere, the company's very first job was to build the perspex cockpit canopy which Vanwall used during practice for the 1958 Italian GP at Monza.

The new company tuned and prepared engines for customers, specialising in Coventry Climax units. Colin Chapman managed to get hold of the new Ford 105E engine, which appeared in the new Anglia in October 1959. A Cosworth Ford engine appeared in the prototype Lotus 18 Formula Junior car at the Boxing Day Brands Hatch Meeting, but the engine broke during practice and the car was unsorted so neither car nor engine appeared to be much threat.