Frank Dernie

By the time he left Uni to return to David Browns they had sold Aston Martin and he ended up as a junior engineer in the Noise and Vibration section of the R&D dept.

He also invented active suspension for use on the Williams car (introduced in 1987 winning its first race the Italian GP at Monza with Nelson Piquet), a few years later banned by FIA to increase competition).

Frank Dernie was also the first ever Formula One engineer to use computers to aid design, although such software did not exist, initially he had to write his own machine code in order to do so.

Ross Brawn, who had worked with Frank at Williams encouraged him to join Benetton for 1991 where he was instrumental in the development of the car, but in particular to improve the race team.

At the start of 1992 Dernie was at the Ligier team during the tests where Alain Prost was evaluating the car, noting that he was around 1.5 to 2 seconds quicker than regular driver Boutsen could lap at.