In Memoriam

It is with the deepest sadness I have to announce that Wirth Research’s Chief Aerodynamicist, Andy MacAulay, passed away recently at his home.

All of us at Wirth Research are shocked and saddened to lose our colleague and friend, and we wish to express our sincere condolences to his mother, brothers, sister and the rest of his family at this difficult time. Even before we met in 2000, as Chief Aerodynamicist at Reynard Racing Cars, his race and championship winning Reynards had already showed the world his talents, and I’m sure my friends and colleagues in the US open-wheel racing world will remember his achievements and skills in the Reynard days.

I first met Andy in 2001 when I was briefly Technical Director at Reynard and in his many years working with me both at Reynard and subsequently at Wirth Research, I absolutely loved working with Andy on an amazing diverse range of projects.

At Wirth Research, his work on the Honda IndyCar aero program was pivotal to the incredible run of success we had.

When Honda asked us to move to LMP car development, he switched to working on the legendary Acura LMP2 cars, and Andy’s contributions and insights to that program led to many of the aerodynamic breakthroughs (including our switch to our CFD-only aero process) that resulted in 4 Le Mans class wins, 10 championship titles and Acura’s utter domination of the LMP2 world.

Despite his obvious motorsport heritage, passion and winning history, in 2018 Andy completely embraced and supported Wirth Research’s pivot away from motorsport to our new core strategy of developing energy-saving products.

Simply stated, Andy was one of the very finest and most talented engineers that I have had the privilege to work with in my 34-year career. He was thoughtful, creative, hard-working, open to new ideas, and he was universally respected and liked within our company.

Andy – we miss you and may your rest in peace, my dear friend.

Nick Wirth

July 2020

Picture: Andy MacAulay (white shirt, centre) working in the wind-tunnel on the successful Acura ARX-01a LMP2 sports prototype racer