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Legendary Engineer Divila Passes Away at 74

Famed engineer, designer Ricardo Divila passes away after short illness at age of 74…

Photo: Nissan

Renowned engineer Ricardo Divila has passed away following a short illness at the age of 74.

The Brazilian’s motorsport career spanned six decades, most notably for designing the Fittipaldi F1 cars in the 1970s and was largely involved in the open-wheel ranks until the 1990s.

Divila, who spent time in Japan, held engineering positions at Pescarolo, Dome, SARD and most recently Nissan with various sports car racing projects.

He was a key technical figure within the Nissan GT Academy graduate program, as also played roles in the DeltaWing and ill-fated Nissan GT-R LM NISMO LMP1 project.

He had continued to engineer cars with RJN Motorsport even after Nissan had pulled its backing on its European program and remained a regular visitor to the sports car racing paddocks worldwide.

In his nearly 60 years in the sport, Divila worked more than 2,600 races, including 286 F1 GPs.

Tributes have poured in from the sports car racing world on news of Divila’s passing.

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John

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