AT&T Williams F1

Ed Wood suspects he might work in the world of academia if he wasn’t engaged in motorsport. An ironic alternative, that, for somebody who once turned his back on education...

Wood’s father was a member of the Royal Signals White Helmets, the British Army’s famous motorcycle display team, and competed on two wheels during the 1950s and 1960s. “He carried on preparing bikes for others after he’d retired from racing,” Ed says, “so there was always stuff lying around when I was growing up.

There was a lot of innovation back then. The regulations were less restrictive and people often built home-brewed machines for the track. I was probably about 10 when I started... and by the time I was 14 I was doing my own restoration work and running a dirt bike.”

At 18 he had the choice of studying engineering at university... or going racing. He plumped for Option B. “At that stage,” he says, “I had absolutely no interest in carrying on my education, so I got a job working in what is now the Superbike World Championship, although at the time it was called Formula One. Back then we made our own chassis, bodywork and suspension in relatively poorly equipped workshops – a double garage with a lathe, a mill and a couple of gas bottles. Such were the conditions in which we built bikes for the Isle of Man, Daytona and other big races.”

It was a romantic, nomadic existence – but the good times were all too often tinged by tragedy. “It was a pretty difficult life for a 19-year-old,” Ed says. “When we went to Europe we stayed away for five or six months, living in a converted bus. We were a band of brothers travelling around together – every rider had one mechanic, or two if they were really rich. You’d pitch up at a circuit and stay there after the race, prepping the bikes for the next event before moving on. Everyone became very close and I lost a few friends… a couple of the guys we raced against were killed in accidents and then my boss, Kenny Irons, died at Cadwell Park in 1988. At that point I made up my mind to go to university to study mechanical engineering. I subsequently opted to work on cars, partly because of previous circumstances and partly because it’s a much bigger industry – I wanted to find stable employment.”

He spent time working on Jaguar’s endurance racing programme before going on to university, which helped answer many of the questions that had previously formed in his mind. And after opting to commence his degree slightly later than most, he ended up completing a doctorate and staying at university for seven years.

While there he did a spot of teaching, too, a profession he was seriously considering when he saw a classified advertisement in Autosport: “Wanted, research and development engineer for Formula One team. Based in northern Italy.” He applied and in late 1997 landed his first F1 job, courtesy of Ferrari.

He spent three years there and two at Renault before switching to the World Rally Championship, where he worked as chief designer on Prodrive’s programme with Subaru. He stayed there until March 2006, when Williams offered him a similar position.

When he’s not busy with F1, his original passion endures. “My son is now 10,” he says, “and we’ve just started to work on bikes together, removing the head from two-stroke engines and so on... As an engineer you never get bored – creativity is in your blood.”

In his own words: “I’m passionate about what I do, and quietly determined.”