So a few years back, my wife bought me a piston signed by Niki lauda. It was advertised as a Ferrari piston, but found that not to be true once I found the cosworth name cast into the bottom of it. I contacted a company in the UK who makes replacement parts for DFV engines, and the serial numbers line up when Niki was driving for McLaren in the early 80's. One of my prized possessions ❤

I just want the naturally aspirated engines back

"Duckworth worked for Cosworth" did he? I could have sworn he WAS Cosworth, or at least 50% of it, I mean it was the merger of names of its founders, Mike COStin and Keith DuckWORTH....COS_WORTH. Let's be honest though, it was really more like Duckworth WAS Cosworth, he was an absolute legend in the engine design space. The loss of Cosworth in F1 has ultimately led to an imbalance in the teams being competitive. Back in the day, you bought a Cosworth DFV engine and made your chassis and as long as your chassis wasn't rubbish, then you were competitive. RIP Keith, you are missed.

The DFV actually got used until the 90's when they stroked t up to 3.5l. An astonishing engine.

I'll never understand how Jim Clark won the USGP by a lap with an H16 in his lotus. If he had lived and developed the 49/72...man.

So much wrong information. Turbo era began in 1982 not 72. Ground effect wasn‘t used in the mid 70s it was used in the late 70s. Duckworth was co founder of cosworth not a rendom employee . What about Costin? Not even mentioned in the video. The 4 pot the engine is commonly known as „kent“.

With the DFV you can't forget the Hewland gearbox it was mated to. A video on that would be nice. As well as on A.P. brakes.

While Ford had nothing to do with the design of the DFV, they did bring two very important people together. Colin Chapman and Keith Duckworth. A huge part of the success of the engine was due to Chapman's brilliant idea of making the engine a stressed member of the chassis. An idea still in use today and Keith built the DFV to do just that. Ford's greatest contribution(they owned the rights to the engine) and what made them and Cosworth a ton of money was to share the engine with the world. They didn't have to do that as they could've kept the engine exclusive for Lotus only and literally dominated F-1 for over a decade. Also to their credit Ford didn't insist on calling the destroked version that dominated Indycar racing a Ford either. They let Cosworth have the glory.

They were still using a variation of the DFV in F1 until the 90's! From what I remember, Benneton and a few back markers were using updated and sometimes rebadged Cosworths when the turbo were banned

Not a very well researched/edited video in comparison to your usual high standards Scott... 1) Keith Duckworth didn't "work" for Cosworth, he is one half of the company's founders! Mike Costin (Cos), Keith Duckworth (Worth). 2) 3:50 "And Jim Clark" .... that's still Graham Hill 3) "High Revs" - the DFV may have revved higher compared to other v8's, but 9,000 rpm was still lower than what the 12 cylinders were managing at that time - Ferrari's Flat 12, the "Tipo 001" was producing peak power at 12,600 rpm in 1970 (never mind it's redline value!) Compact, fuel efficient and more torque are typical attributes of comparison for an engine of same displacement but with less cylinders .... "high revving" tends not to be. An engine with more cylinders will typically rev higher because each cylinder is smaller, hence lighter, hence less momentum, inertia etc... to move :) 4) 8:20 "when the Turbo engine eventually took over Formula 1 in 1972" .... factually wrong. 1977 was when the first Turbo engine turned up, Cosworth DFV's 155th (and final) win was in 1983.

In the 1960s Ford engineers in Detroit designed excellent racing engines for indianapolis and the Ford GT. But the Cosworth DFV was designed by Keith Duckworth.

I've had the opportunity to stand right beside a DFV when it was started for warming up at Zandvoort in the pits, could feel it all through my spine of course 😄 unforgettable experience, fia historic Grand Prix is an amazing event if you like older race cars! You brits usually have it at Silverstone, for those who don't know

The engine that Enzo hated the most.

To quote Jeremy Clarkson, it made a dirty, dirty noise. From attending historic F1 events, I can confirm it certainly does.

Another Ford engine similar to the DFV was the Series 4 that was developed for the Indianapolis 500. It was developed from the Series 3 based on the 260 stock block engine. It was cast aluminum with 255 cubic inch displacement. It had 2 valve heads. The Series 4 was a gear driven 4 valve head design that ran on alcohol fuel. It produced over 400 HP and won the 500 in 1965, 6 and 7.

The DFV was not the first 3 litre V8 in F1. That honour goes to Brabham which had a Oldsmobile engine modified by Repco in Australia. That combination won both F1 championships in 1966 and 1967.

I grew up watching this engine take over the world,. Amazing drivers,circuits and cars. Constant nail biting action.with THE best soundtrack motorsport will ever have

As a mechanic I really love these engine mini docs!

A outstanding piece once again Mansell. Great job!😊

I was at Imperial College some years after Keith Duckworth, and was told he spent 3 years in the basement of Mech Eng designing the engine. He did not attend any lectures, he just spent 3 years designing the engine with input from a number of professors who had realised he was a genius to be encouraged not made to follow the usual degree path.

That has to be the best description, explanation, and analysis of the DFV (including the reason for its name) I've ever heard, and I've been an F1 fan since '92 and CART/IndyCar since 1993. Thank you! As always, when Driver61 pops up on my feed I get a Scotch/Rocks and a headset and you have my undivided attention. Awesome!!

8:20 1983 was the first year when the majority of the teams started with a turbo engine. In this year Piquet was the first "turbo" champion.

Another fun engine to do a video on would be the Ford 427 SOHC AKA "The Cammer." An engine so badass that it got banned in NASCAR before ever making a single lap due to Chrysler complaining about it because they knew it was gonna eat their 426 Hemi alive.

I literally just finished building my 1:8 scale version of the Lotus type 49. Surely a crazy, and beautiful car!

The engine had a new life in its later iterations of the DFY and DFX Indycar engine in the late 70's and early 80's. They cleaned up and for a decade pretty much did in Indycar what the DFV did and later variants were Champcar motors in the 2000's.

Mike Dixon’s motocross MXGP team had Cosworth build their carbureted 250cc 4 stroke dirt bike engines. Was amazing in early 2010’s or late 00’s

I miss F1 so much...

So Ford provided the money but didn't design and built it ,looks like the upcoming Red Bull deal. Cosworth should be credited in the title.

You know it was basically two Ford FVA 1600cc twincam 4 cylinders mated together? Which, incidently, was the engine powering the Lotus 48 racecar that Jim Clark was tragically killed in..

Turbos took over in 1982, not 72. Turbos where introduced by the yellow tea pot in 1977 but took a few years to stop going up in smoke. Ground effect cars took over in the late 70's. 1978 - Mario Andretti Champ year and also Lotus's last championship.

First ever win of the DFV comes in the Lotus 49/R2 at Zandvoort, Dutch GP, 4th juin 1967, driven by the most iconic pilot: JIM CLARK - By far the greatest driver ever - no doubt. He is and was "The Best of the Best" (Fangio, Senna, Prost, Stewart and countless others about Clark). No other driver in history until today was so superior as Clark - No other driver as so much "Grand Slam" - Pole/Win/Fastest Lap/Leading every lap of the race - like him. And all that from just 72 starts... ! This man is the Olymp of driving - the Michelangelo of racing - a dynamic art at the highest level. So smooth, so precise, so fast....simply out of this world. One, who won in Spa by 5 minutes (!) in monsoon rain with only one hand at the wheel (!) because of gearbox trouble...One, who takes back a complete lap (!) in Monza and back into the lead... One, who took pole on the original 22,8 km Nürburgring track by 9 (!) seconds and more....One who won Indy by 2 whole (!) laps...For eternity and by lightyears unmatched in the sport. That`s just four examples of his mesmeric unique genius...

Interesting historical note is that Henry Ford designed his farm tractors to use the tractor engine and transmission as mounting points for the suspension..

Was it designed by Ford though? I was under the impression that it was designed by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth.

Just to clarify, Ford had nothing to do with the design of the Cosworth DFV. Also, the BRM H-16 is not anything like 2 V8 engines joined together. More like 4 Subaru flat 4's joined into a pair of flat 8 cylinder engines with one stacked on top of the other.

Can you make a video about offenhauser engine. It been used since 40s to 70s fighting the coswarth engine in the infycar

The 4 valve per cylinder design had been around even before Keith Duckworth was born, and I am not saying this to take anything away from his talents as a design engineer but merely to illustrate that the exceptional is often an evolution of existing ideas, I have to admit I had thought it was Harry Ricardo that invented the idea but apparently it goes back to 1911 when Indian introduced their pushrod 8-valve twin racer and it was the following year that a motorcar was to have an engine with two overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder which was the 1912 Peugeot L76 Grand Prix race car designed by Ernest Henry of course these engines were not without their problems but design engineers like Keith Duckworth knew how to solve these problems with the use of modern material, technology and financial backing.

Ford selected the designers and engineers and paid them to develop these engines for their racing program. Businesses rarely have a complete technical team for their programmes. Ford paid for this and therefore they own them.

Just watch Ford, have a timeless innovative design fifty years ago, but never take steps further! I want more than a Ford Mustang, gimme something more!

It was Cosworth who designed and produced the DFV. Ford "only" funded the development.

The whole idea of the Engine been part of the cars load baring stucture was Colin Chapman he asked for it when he was developing the Lotus 49 project. these three guys Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth had spent my hours over many pints of Beer talking about their idea's for a new type of F1 car and its power plant money was the only issues but Colin had his contacts with Ford after developing cars like the Lotus Cortina and Ford Escort Twin Cam and his Indy 500 project . That $100.000 has to be one of the best deals ever made. There is a great old documentry on the development of the Lotus 49 and the DFV from the 60's otherwise if you can track down a copy of the Legendry BBC TV series the power and the Glory,that covers as part of the series several ereas of F1 as well as all aspects of then of Motor sport from the very start until the mid 80's. Hopfully someone uploaded it onto UKposts .

Duckworth did not simply "work for Cosworth", half his name was in the company name - the first half being that of Mike Costin - because they were the two company founders...

Duckworth Chapman Lotus Cosworth & Cooper engine royalty, during the glory days of British motorsports, I watched them race every weekend on the TV, BBC grandstand ITV World of sport.

It was this engine that caused the legendary remark from Enzo Ferrari. That aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines. Most of the field were using this engine when he said it.

One of the peak highlights of British engineering design.

That green and yellow lotus '67 was an absolutely beautiful car

Cosworth also completely changed modern engine design principles. Lower included valve angles lead to better breathing at higher RPM. Even Honda’s 20000 rpm engines had hemispherical combustion chambers at the time. The short stroke, wide angle V also allowed room for the exhaust pipes and leads to a lower center of gravity than flat engines,as the cars are so low, there’s no room for exhaust pipes under the car and you’d actually have to raise your engine to make room…

I was yesterday at the Spa 6 hours, it hurts so much when you see how strong Ford used to be. The Spa 6 hours itself is dominated by the Ford GT40's, but almost every other brand is driving Ford engines as well. Not only that, I was wondering: "Where are the Ferrari's?". Answer: "Too expensive to maintain.". It's even budget friendly. Also the Capri Cosworth destroyed the whole field in the Belcar Historic Cup, starting in the 2nd group with the older cars. But 1 lap later the Capri was already 6th, overtaking 30-40 cars in just 1 lap. Later overtaking M3's, 911's and more from the 90's and even a Corvette C4 with a whopping 800Bhp. The Capri only has 435Bhp, is from the early 70's, and casually destroying DTM cars from the 90's. At Zolder a decade ago also a Cosworth Capri being 4 seconds a lap faster than the Alfa Romeo 155 DTM legend. Now Ford is rather pathetic, really sad about it.

I heard incredible music from all types of engine’s screaming around Trenton and this was one of them.

The story of Cosworth in inextricably linked with Lotus both Cosworths founders had worked for lotus before establishing their own business and many of the early projects were for or collaborative with Lotus.

Just as I saw you uploaded this video, I just finished listening to and watching some F1 legends from 1966-1985 at the Spa Sound of History classics event. What a coincidence! These engines are enormously loud, but fun to listen to.

Thank you for a very well produced and researched video. But maybe the title could be "When Ford wrote the cheque to Cosworth, who designed and built the DFV"?

Keith is one of greatest engineers ever involded on motorsport. The DFV is hands down the most successful racing engine ever built.

I think its inaccurate to say Ford designed the DFV. Cosworth (Duckworth and Costin) designed the engine, and then built it at their own plant in Northampton. Ford did finance and sponsor the development (via Lotus and Colin Chapman), but as far as I can tell had no say in the design.

best engine ever

Ford deserves a lot of credit for pushing the boundaries of racing in the '60s, and for partnering with Cosworth. I would like to see them back in racing, as Cadillac seems to be doing. I'd love to see an Andretti Ford F1 team.

just a small correction, scott meant 1982, not 1972 when turbo engines really took over

Many of the innovations listed for the Cosworth already existed. When the 3-litre rules came in Jack Brabham quickly built a V8 based on the production Oldsmobile 215 alloy V8 with overhead cam heads designed by Phil Irving. He won the championship with that engine thus becoming the only person ever to win the driver's championship in his own car. That was a flatplane crankshaft engine as were all early V8s until the cross-plane crankshaft was developed. Tuning the exhausts of V8s could be a problem and contributed to some F1 V8s being reversed with the exhaust in the valley of the V and the inlets at the side of the engine. Using the engine as a structural element of the chassis was well known and had been used in cars, motorcycles (HRD Vincent for one) and pretty much all WWII aircraft. Four-valve heads had been around since the Peugeot GP car of 1912 but had fallen out of favour as the failure to understand gas flow and combustion meant that they did not perform much better than a two-valve hemi but were more complex. The four-valve head started its comeback in the early 60s with Honda racing motorcycles and the beginnings of designing the heads for squish. This was further developed by Weslake Engineering for Ford and later turned up in the Gurney/Weslake engines. THEN Keith Duckworth continued that development, his earlier engines were very different, some using Herron combustion chambers. There were many great British racing engine engineers in that era including one of Keith Duckworth's "Heros" Walter Hassan of Coventry Climax. Many of these people cut their teeth in aero engine design during WWII, whereas others such as Harry Weslake were legends in the British motor industry. Firing order? It may be related to exhaust timing but usually firing orders are optimised to keep the crankshaft vibrational modes under control so that the crankshaft does not break. Don't get me wrong, the engine was a great design but it was not doing anything new or innovative and THAT is one of the major reasons it was successful, it was just well-engineered. Unusual but not innovative was the BRM H16, and we know how that ended. There had been H engines before, most notably in aero engines with two prominent examples being the Napier Sabre and the Rolls-Royce Eagle 22, both of these were H24s using sleeve valves (most important for building a compact H engine!!!). The BRM H16 was designed by Tony Rudd who had come to BRM from (cough, splutter) Rolls-Royce.

The turbo didn't take over F1 by 1972. The very first driver championship was won in 1983. (8:45)

Is that cosworth available to purchase or are there any similar engines that can be bought today?

lotus cortina (Lookalike?)with a cosworth.? Now that would be a class combination 👍

60s and 70 ford was top of its game world wide and across the board

So I didn't see any comments mentioning it, but I thinkyou missed the technology that gave the engine it's tech. (This is from Kevin Camerons 'Classic Motorcycle Race engines') You mentioned the engine had 4 valves per cylinder, and this allowed air to enter and exit the cylinder, there by allowing higher revs. However you missed a step here. All that air and gas mixture has to burn. It's the burn time that was the limiting factor of the engine, not the valves. (The valves were a limiting factor but that comes up later) See the way two valves engines would work, would be to have the intake valve set to one side of the cylinder. When the intake-charge was pulled In, it would swirl around the cylinder like liquide does in a blender. This swirling would allow faster combustion. However at higher rpm, the valve size goes up to get increases flow. This makes for heavier valves and a slower valve train. You can get around this by using 4 valves, but now you have valves off set to either side. As the air-charge mixture comes rushing in, the two paths cancel each other out. Killing all the swirl. The cosworth genius was to think "instead of a swirl that spins like a blender, what if we make the valve angle really steep, and get a swirl like a front loading washing machine? This created a combination of higher flow, and more efficient combustion. About 10% more efficient, which is what the lap times tended to reflect. Casworths design didn't get figured out until the 80's. (Ducati had to discover it independently) other engines designers tried to copy the Cosworth design, but because they didn't know what they were shooting for (a horizontal curl) they couldn't replicate their success. All the other factors you listed were new to me, so thanks for sharing. I appreciate the vid.

5:06 i like how the rev gauge lags a bit behind

What about the DFX, and how it helped develop the Sierra Cosworth?

Thanks mate, top video! Can you please do one on a fello Aussie. Brabham?

Such a great explanation. I'd always heard about this engine, but as it was before my time, I never looked into why. Thanks for this great video.

I wonder if adrian newey analyzed this engine and the car built around it to inspire more of his design specialties.

Loved BRM too!

Shout out for the Grand Prix Legends thumbnail

You forgot something the DFV was an exclusive engine devloped to be used only by Lotus , it was Colin Chapmans who said that he could kill the sport if he kept Ford and Cosworth to their contract with Lotus . So he allowed Ford / Coswoth to sell this engine to anyone who wanted to buy it and unliked today everyone got the same engine .all you needed was a talented designer and you could in theory win races or the championship. Other spin off's from the Cosworth DFV project were the four pot 16 V BDA engine used to great effects in the Mk 1 and Mk 2 Escorts the whole Ford / Cosworth deal led to a string of race and road cars from Ford Europe. The DFV would find its way into LM Prototypes in different forms this still has to be one of the greatest engine's built

My Caterham7 is equipped with a Cosworth engine from that time. I take pride in that! 💫🏁

I6, load bearing, 24 valves, 1 small snail and a pipe towards the heavens. Orgel fertig Chef.

8:25:"When the turbo engines took over in 1972..." I believe you meant 1982. There were no turbo engines in F1 during the 1970's.

The 4 valves confiig wasn't the most significant element. The included valve angle and the port angle were set up to make barrel turbulence or tumble. This mixture motion allows efficient combustion at higher revs without the added friction and complexity of an increased number of cylinders. It took the others a long time to figure this out. Now almost every production engine has this type of combustion chamber. The Coventry Climax 1.5 liter engine tried a 4v head but wasn't successful due to its large included angle. It needed 50 degrees of ignition advance to make the same power as the 2V version.

Seems like they laid the foundations for all modern day formula one, and Indy car racing. While iterations of their original engine design are still utilized, and incorporated. On Hoonigan you can watch them put a Honda Indy car engine in a Ridgeline. In the end, that Honda engine looks just like the Ford featured in this wonderful video.

Great video, exciting times with Ford getting back into f1.

A cosworth engine that ford funded

Narrower inclused valve angle lead to better combustion , airflow isn't everything if you cant burn it effeciciently

Legendary. There are no other words.

I thought Duckworth was one of the founders, with Cosman - hence Cosworth (or Duckman, lol)

I saw Clark race his Lotus Ford in Trenton making those Offys look like they were out for a leisurely Sunday drive.

The Cosworth looks like it took many features of the Ford GAA. All gear cam drive,double over head cams , and four valves per cylinder.

The Lotus Jim Clark drove in the 60's was and still is the prettiest race car ever!

Sir Jack Brabham, the only WDC to win the WDC in a car he designed and helped build himself. Greatest WDC ever, no one else has done that!

I never understand how it works in rainy days when the air intake was pointing upwards

The H16 was 2 flat 8 cylinder engines, not V8 😊😊😊😊😊😊

Cosworth not Ford.. Ford paid for start of the project.

Imagine that - an engine that sounds fantastic. The RB7 driven by Liam Lawson at Bathurst last year sounded incredible.

The Cosworth was NOT a high revving engine compared to it's competition, in fact it was run dangerously close to it's mechanical limit just to keep up. Miss one shift and it was a matter of WHEN, not if it was going to drop a valve. What made it legendary was the sheer number of teams that used it every season, through the 70's and early 80's half the grid was powered by the Ford and it won every race of the season on two occasions. The fact is from the mid 70's the flat Ferrari T cars had the superior package, ground effects and the unreliability of the early turbos benefited the DFV's winning persentage greatly. A side note is in the late 60's Toyota built a 3 L V8 engine (based on the DFV) for sports car racing, it made up to 40 HP more due to a more modern design, Cosworth never had the deep pockets it needed to keep the engine close to the cutting edge, it spent most of it's life being just good enough to get the job done at a reasonable price. Later in it's life people like John Judd tickle 20 or so extra HP (and 300 more revs) but the engine was still rooted in 1960's design and architecture.

Scott, you made a mistake. The turbo engines were first introduced in 1977 and took over in, what i think you meant 1982.

Motor muito bom mesmo.

Down the gears the cosworth sounded rough, but the Ferrari sound the same up and down the gears-

Kick the fires n light the tires! 💪😎👍

If anything the turbo hybrid era has shown us, we NEED another Cosworth. It's almost a farce that a team that wins the championship dominantly one year, is nowhere the next, simply because their engine isn't up to snuff and their main rivals won't supply an engine to them. As much as many people would like to see Red Bull's dominance end, in 2026, we could well be in the same situation as we were in between 2014-2016 (or till 2020). It's fair to say that Ferrari, Mercedes and Honda are at least on par in terms of power (and have been for a few years now) and it's Red Bull's engineering team that are making the difference, as they should and not because Honda has a LOT more power (otherwise AlphaTauri would be as far up the grid as Williams was in 2014 and 15).

We need a formula x with much more freedom to allow experimentation. Unlikely to happen, but one can dream.

"it loved to blow up" is like me

British and American high performance collaboration. The Merlin engine equipped Mustang fighter and Ford/Cosworth engine F1/Indy cars.

You missed setting up camp in 5 min and pull out kitchens

It should be mentioned that Cosworths 300ci DOHC V8 wasn’t thought up & designed out of thin air or Duckwoths head… See: Harry A. Miller’s 308ci DOHC V8 in the FWD (Four Wheel Drive) Indy Race cars of 1932. Millers DOHC - 4-valve per cylinder Flat-Plane Crankshaft designed engines (4, 8, & 16 cyl) planted the Race Winning seed in many engine designers heads for decades and still today. (…and yes, Harry’s idea came from Peugeot around 1917!)

Great video, thank you so much. You make a verbal mistake @7:10 saying that Ferrari and Alfa were using "flat vee twelves."