Alan Jenkins is born

Alan Jenkins built a Formula 1 career in the space between famous technical directors and fragile teams. Born on 24 July 1947, he contributed to McLaren’s early carbon-fibre era, designed the neat Onyx ORE-1 and later carried responsibility at Arrows, Stewart and Prost.

Jenkins entered Grand Prix racing in the late 1970s, initially working with Héctor Rebaque’s privateer operation before joining Ron Dennis’s Project 4 organisation. When Project 4 took control of McLaren, Jenkins became part of the engineering group around John Barnard and the MP4/1, the car that made a carbon-fibre composite monocoque the new Formula 1 standard rather than an experiment.

From race engineering to his own designs

At McLaren, Jenkins also worked as a race engineer, including with Alain Prost during the Frenchman’s narrow 1984 championship defeat. He then moved to the United States with Penske, broadening a career that was never confined to one category or one technical fashion.

His return to Formula 1 came with Onyx. The team’s 1989 ORE-1 was late, underfunded and attached to an ownership story that soon became louder than the racing, but the car was fundamentally sound. Stefan Johansson took it to third place in Portugal, the only podium of Onyx’s short Formula 1 life.

Jenkins subsequently joined Arrows, then competing as Footwork. That period included the disastrous Porsche V12 programme of 1991, an engine project whose size and weight left the chassis department solving problems it had not created. The later Footworks were more conventional and occasionally effective, but stable budgets and engines remained in short supply.

A new team at Stewart

In 1996 Jenkins became technical director of the new Stewart Grand Prix team. The first Stewart, the SF01, was quick enough for Rubens Barrichello to finish second in the wet 1997 Monaco Grand Prix, but chronic reliability made the team’s debut season far harder than that result suggested. Jenkins left before Stewart’s first victory in 1999 and later worked as technical director at Prost.

His Formula 1 record is not defined by a championship car carrying his name. It is a career of difficult projects, transitions and occasional proof that a small or new team had built something better than its circumstances allowed. The Onyx podium and Stewart’s Monaco result remain the sharpest examples.