John Miles

John Miles (14 June 1943 - 8 April 2018): British racing driver from England who started his career in 1963 driving a Ford-powered Diva GT in sports car races. Miles used his substantial skills as an engineer and driver to make a Lotus Elan quick enough to score nine consecutive wins and claim a British GT championship in 1966. In 1966 a dominant Autosport GT Championship season in his Lotus Elan caught the eye of Lotus sales director Graham Arnold, who swiftly told Colin Chapman to keep an eye on this young driver. Chapman gave Miles his chance that year as Jim Clark hadn't turned up to drive his Lotus Cortina at the Oulton Park Gold Cup.

He participated in 15 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, making his debut on 6 July 1969 in the Lotus 63 4-wheel drive F1 car for which he was the official Team Lotus test driver. In 1969 Miles had to develop the Lotus 63 4WD car while World Champion Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt refused to drive this design, considering it a death trap. Miles was promoted to number two Lotus F1 driver behind Jochen Rindt for the 1970 Formula One season, scoring two championship points total with a fifth place in the 1970 South African Grand Prix. His teammate Rindt was killed when one of the brake shafts on his new Type 72 failed and his car veered off the track.

That was too much for Miles, who was widely regarded as too cerebral and sensitive to fit Chapman's idea of a race driver, and he left the team. Following a couple of non-championship F1 races for BRM, Miles returned to sports cars, winning another British title in 1971, then turned his back on the sport completely, going on to a successful career first as a technical journalist and then as a design engineer in the motor industry. He became involved with their F1 work in the early 1990s, setting up the chassis for Mika Häkkinen, Johnny Herbert, and Alex Zanardi. After 18 years as a Lotus engineer he was with Aston Martin for three years, working on the DB7 GT, the Vanquish, and the Vanquish S.

John Miles passed away at age 74 on 8 April 2018.