Never in the history of racing has there ever been a person better at sniffing out good coffee than Ricardo Divila. Like the rest of us he could be found lurking somewhere near either an Italian team or tyre company at a race track if his team had been remiss enough not to bring a proper coffee machine itself. Even when he wasn’t connected to a team but was at a track just to scan and search for a new way to get to Le Mans to try to win it he still knew enough engineers and team members that he could find coffee. What was a measure of him was that he knew a lot of people, young engineers and old hands and each were happy to help him in his quest for caffeine.
Others will write about Ricardo’s life as a Formula 1 designer and engineer, about the Copersucar programme with the Fittipaldis or will write about his exploits in Japan with Super GT. Some may even write about his attempts to win Le Mans overall with Nissan. Some who knew him will write about the trepidation to answer a Skype call from him in the summer; there was every chance that he was on video and in his underpants.
However, I’ll write about what I knew and that was of a brilliant mind, a high intellect and a humour that transcended pretty much all situations. He was fascinated by anything that was unusual. Anything that was out of the ordinary and would distract Ricardo from every day engineering would prick his interest and he would quickly find out who was involved (normally someone he worked with) and then would head off to find out what he could. There was another driving force behind him and that was the desire to teach.
There was a slight problem with that latter point. Organisation was not his strong point, probably due to the incredible amounts of caffeine that he had in his bloodstream. His features for Racecar Engineering were delivered after an all-nighter trying to get his documents in order. What was delivered was outstanding work although he was often slightly offended when his original efforts had to be cut to fit the pages available. He decided that he liked the internet where space was less of a constraint although never got around to writing the pieces he wanted to; he was just too busy.
But he wanted to write. He wanted the information that was on his various computers and hard drives distributed to a wider community. He worried intensely that young engineers were losing their reason to question what they were doing. Computers were tools that could help to speed up processing, but he was a passionate believer in what Danny Nowlan often terms ‘hand calculations’. A series of articles explaining the reasoning behind the figures was planned for this year and he was looking forward to writing them.
He also wanted to explain the reasoning behind the GTR-LM project for Nissan. There was a reason why the company spent more than 70 million Euros on the programme and Ricardo wanted to explain the sound engineering logic behind the programme. Without a single NDA signed he was perfectly placed to write the features.
But Ricardo’s best-known exploits in Racecar Engineering were his columns. Often, he would look forward to a race sat on the pit wall on deadline, the Spa 24-hours for example, because he could have 20 minutes mid-stint to crash out what often turned out to be his finest work. That said, when he thought about his columns, they were even funnier. He wrote one about sexually transmitted diseases and compared the details behind contracting them to allowing manufacturers to writing regulations for motor racing. Few could ever make that link.
His rants were always impossible to argue and often contained a whole world of humour. Writing on Twitter as the Platypus of Doom or the Clam of Calamity he explored his own racing history with a degree of that same self-deprecating humour. He was just a funny guy, with an intelligence that outshone many. He was always reading some philosophical book or challenging established thinking.
I first learned of his ill health when his wife phoned to warn us not to expect his column or his feature on suspension kinematics as he had been admitted to hospital for a scan for pancreatic cancer and shortly afterwards had a stroke. He continued to tweet and email, but two weeks ago that stopped. It turned out that he had slipped into a coma, and it was with tremendous sadness that today, Saturday April 25, we learned of his death. It was not surprising; although he didn’t drink he did everything else to excess.
While he would not share a beer or whiskey with me when he was alive, I shall raise a glass to a great friend this evening with a tear in the eye and a smile. He has gone to investigate the next great mystery of life. I just worry that he will find some way of letting us know how he is getting on. I hope he gets dressed first.
