Charlie Moody 1956-2011

© Sutton Motorsport Images

Charlie Moody, a former F1 team manager, has died as the result of a neuromuscular disorder at the age of just 53. A native of Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, he graduated from Sheffield Polytechnic in 1977 and immediately joined Walter Wolf Racing in Reading, as a mechanic. He worked with Jody Scheckter in 1978 and with James Hunt and Keke Rosberg in 1979. When the team was swallowed up by Fittipaldi at the end of 1979 he stayed with Rosberg and then followed the Finn to Williams in 1982. Rosberg won the World Championship that year.

Moody settled at Williams for the next five seasons, but when his former Williams colleague Peter Collins was appointed Benetton team manager in 1985, Charlie was offered the opportunity to run the Benetton test team. He stayed there until 1989 when he was recruited to do the same job for Leyton House Racing. He became the Leyton House team manager in May 1990. He remained with the team through a series of setbacks and by the time the team closed down in 1993 he was the only force holding the whole operation together. He returned to F1 the following year with the new Simtek Grand Prix and guided the team through the difficult times after the death of Roland Ratzenberger at Imola that season. He continued at Simtek until the team folded in mid-1995 and, a little weary with Grand Prix racing after several difficult seasons, he went to work for Janspeed in the British Touring Car Championship. He would return to Formula 1 again in 1999 when he was taken on by Williams to run the BMW F1 testing programme, which was run out of Munich. After that he moved on to motorcycle racing and became one of the leading players in Kenny Roberts’s team before moving on in 2009 to become the operations manager of the Rizla Suzuki team, a role he held until a few days ago, when Suzuki announced its withdrawal from the sport.

Charlie was a great racer and a lovely human being.

He leaves behind his wife Arlene and sons Wil and Nic.