Harvey Postlethwaite, 1980

Harvey Postlethwaite (1944-1999) was a British engineer and Technical Director of several Formula One teams in the 1970’s, 1980’s and even 1990’s. Indeed during these three decades, Postlethwaite was a leading engineer for the Hesketh, Tyrrell, Ferrari and Honda F1 teams. Sadly, he died of a heart attack in Spain in 1999 while supervising the testing of the aborted Honda F1 project.

Picture above: The ‘Doc’ with his driver Keke Rosberg in 1980, when he was technical director of the Skol Fittipaldi team. Rosberg finished third in the season opener in Argentina, but the car was not competitive enough for the rest of the season and for the talented Finn to shine.

When Walter Wolf closed his team at the end of 1979, his engineer Postlethwaite, his cars, and his driver Keke Rosberg, were transferred to the Fittipaldi Automotive team, lead by Wilson and Emerson Fittipaldi. Harvey produced a new design, the F8 (picture-below) that was introduced in the second half of the 1980 season, but left to join Ferrari in early 1981. A new and great adventure began for him.