The Formula 1 wins tally for Cosworth’s DFV topped 150 but as Gary Watkins writes, away from the GP world this Ford-badged V8 packed a punch in a variety of series
Keith Duckworth and his team at Cosworth designed the Ford DFV for one task and one task only – to win in Formula 1. One hundred and fifty-five world championship victories over three decades says they didn’t do a bad job. Yet the Double Four Valve turned out to be much more than a successful grand prix engine, despite its creator’s reticence – hostility even – towards the use of his masterpiece in other disciplines.
When famed sports car team boss John Wyer revealed that he intended to go to the Le Mans 24 Hours with a DFV in the back of a new prototype bearing the Mirage name in 1972, Duckworth told him not to bother. Parnelli Jones’s idea to put a turbo on the DFV for IndyCar racing was met with scorn, and when the team owner ploughed his own development path with the engine, Cosworth didn’t make life easy.
The successes of the DFV in sports car and IndyCar racing, first under the auspices of the United States Auto Club and then CART, says Duckworth got it wrong when it came to his original stance on broadening the DFV’s application. Not only did the Cossie triumph at Le Mans twice, but what became known as the DFX won the Indianapolis 500 10 times on the trot between 1978 and ’87.
The story of Duckworth pooh-poohing Wyer’s plans for the DFV is best told by Derek Bell, who would give the DFV its maiden success at Le Mans paired with Jacky Ickx aboard a Gulf Mirage GR8 in 1975. He’ll even do the voices in his recreation of their reputed exchange: drawled tones for the team boss versus bluff inflections for the northerner who drew the engines. “John said, ‘I say Keith, I’m thinking of taking the Cosworth to Le Mans,’” recounts Bell. “Duckworth’s reply was, ‘I wouldn’t go, lad.’”
John Horsman, Wyer’s long-time engineering chief at JW Automotive and subsequently the driving force behind a team with the words Gulf Research Racing Company above the door, didn’t remember it any differently in an interview with this author in 2017, three years before his death aged 85.
“Keith might have suggested more than once that we shouldn’t waste our time,” recounted Horsman. “He certainly knew the shortcomings of the engine. I wouldn’t say he was against the DFV being used in sports cars, but he wasn’t very keen on it.”
Horsman was all too aware of the problems his team faced. It ha
