Gordon Coppuck (born 8 December 1936 in

Fleet, Hampshire Fleet is a town and civil parish in the Hart District Hart is a local government district in Hampshire, England, named after the River Hart. Its council is based in Fleet. It was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 197 ...

) is a British racing car designer who was chief designer for

McLaren McLaren Racing Limited is a British motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. McLaren is best known as a Formula One constructor, the second oldest active team, and the second most successful Formul ...

and later worked for

March March is the third month of the year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It is the second of seven months to have a length of 31 days. In the Northern Hemisphere, the meteorological beginning of spring occurs on the first day of Marc ...

and co-founded

Spirit Spirit or spirits may refer to: Liquor and other volatile liquids * Spirits, a.k.a. liquor, distilled alcoholic drinks * Spirit or tincture, an extract of plant or animal material dissolved in ethanol * Volatile (especially flammable) liquids, ...

. Born in December 1936, he attended Queen Mary's School for Boys before becoming an apprentice at the

National Gas Turbine Establishment The National Gas Turbine Establishment (NGTE Pyestock) in Farnborough, part of the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), was the prime site in the UK for design and development of gas turbine and jet engines. It was created by merging the design t ...

(NGTE). In 1965 he followed his ex NGTE colleague

Robin Herd Robert John "Robin" Herd (23 March 1939 – 4 June 2019) was an English engineer, designer and businessman. Herd studied at St Peter's College, Oxford, having turned down an offer to play cricket for Worcestershire at the age of 18. He initia ...

to McLaren, working as his assistant. In 1971 he became chief designer at McLaren, responsible for various models including the

Indianapolis 500 The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indi ...

M16 The M16 rifle (officially designated Rifle, Caliber 5.56 mm, M16) is a family of military rifles adapted from the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle for the United States military. The original M16 rifle was a 5.56×45mm automatic rifle with a 20-roun ...

and world championship winning M23. When McLaren merged with

Ron Dennis Ronald Dennis Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 1 June 1947) is a British people, British businessman and Official British Business Ambassador for the United Kingdom. He is best known for his former role as owner, CEO, chairman and founder ...

's Project Four in 1980, Coppuck departed, rejoining Herd at March. The following year he founded Spirit with March's

Formula Two Formula Two (F2 or Formula 2) is a type of open-wheel formula racing category first codified in 1948. It was replaced in 1985 by Formula 3000, but revived by the FIA from 2009–2012 in the form of the FIA Formula Two Championship. The name retur ...

team manager John Wickham. Spirit raced in Formula Two and then

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

before Coppuck returned to March. Coppuck's nephew

Frank Coppuck Frank Coppuck is a British engineer and racing car designer, who helped design the Pacific PR01 and PR02 Formula One cars. A nephew of Formula One engineer Gordon Coppuck. After graduating from Kingston Polytechnic with a Bachelor of Science i ...

is also a racing car designer.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Coppuck, Gordon 1936 births Living people English motorsport people Formula One designers People educated at Queen Mary's School for Boys, Basingstoke McLaren people Formula One team owners