His knowledge of the latest aeronautical engineering techniques would prove vital towards achieving the major automotive technical advances for which he is remembered.

Chapman's design philosophy focused on cars with light weight and fine handling instead of bulking up on horsepower and spring rates, which he famously summarised as "Adding power makes you faster on the straights.

Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman was born on 19 May 1928 in Richmond, Surrey,[1] and brought up at 44 Beech Drive, on the border of Muswell Hill in London N2.

Chapman briefly joined the Royal Air Force in 1948, being offered a permanent commission but turning this down in favour of a swift return to civilian life.

Besides his engineering work, he also piloted a Vanwall F1-car in 1956 but crashed into his teammate Mike Hawthorn during practice for the French Grand Prix at Reims, ending his career as a race driver and focusing him on the technical side.

Their small, lightweight mid-engined vehicles gave away much in terms of power, but superior handling meant their competing cars often beat the all-conquering front engined Ferraris and Maseratis.

Chapman's next major innovation was popularising monocoque chassis construction within automobile racing, with the revolutionary 1962 Lotus 25 Formula One car.

When American Formula One driver Dan Gurney first saw the Lotus 25 at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, he was so struck by the advanced design that he invited Chapman to the 1962 Indianapolis 500, where Gurney made his Indy début at the wheel of a space-frame rear engined car designed by John Crosthwaite (who had previously worked for Chapman) and built by American hot-rodder Mickey Thompson.

Although the material has changed from sheet aluminium to carbon fibre, this remains today the standard technique for building top-level racing cars.

Chapman also originated the movement of radiators away from the front of the car to the sides, to decrease frontal area (lowering aerodynamic drag) and centralising weight distribution.

Car designers have managed to claw back much of that downforce through other means, aided by extensive wind tunnel testing.

For ground effect of that era to function most efficiently, the aerodynamic surfaces needed to be precisely located and this led to the chassis being very stiffly sprung.

He introduced major advertising sponsorship into auto racing; beginning the process which transformed Formula One from a pastime of rich gentlemen to a multi-million pound high technology enterprise.

He was among the first entrants in Formula One to turn their cars into rolling billboards for non-automotive products, initially with the cigarette brands Gold Leaf and, most famously, John Player Special.

From 1978 until his death, Chapman was involved with the American tycoon John DeLorean, in his development of a stainless steel sports car to be built in a factory in Northern Ireland, which was majority-funded by the UK government.

DeLorean Motor Cars subsequently collapsed, during which administrators discovered that £10,000,000 of British taxpayers' money (approximately equivalent to £36 million in 2023)[13][14] had gone missing.

The night before he died, Chapman watched a performance by his long-time friend and Lotus customer Chris Barber, the noted jazz trombonist, and his band.