Neil Oatley is currently Design and Development Director for the McLaren Formula One

Formula One

Formula One, also known as Formula 1 or F1 and referred to officially as the FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of single seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile . The "formula" designation in the name refers to a set of rules with which...

 team.

Graduating from Loughborough University

Loughborough University

Loughborough University is a research based campus university located in the market town of Loughborough, Leicestershire, in the East Midlands of England...

 in 1976 with an Automotive Engineering degree, Oatley worked briefly outside motor racing before joining the Williams

WilliamsF1

Williams Grand Prix Engineering Limited, trading as AT&T Williams, is a British Formula One motor racing team and constructor. It was founded and run by Sir Frank Williams and Patrick Head...

 team in 1977. There he became one of many young engineers to have worked alongside Patrick Head

Patrick Head

Patrick Head , is co-founder and Engineering Director of the Williams Formula One team.For 25 years from Head was technical director at Williams Grand Prix Engineering, and responsible for many innovations within Formula One. Head oversaw the design and construction of Williams cars until May 2004...

 early in their careers before moving on to other organisations. Oatley worked as a draughtsman

Technical drawing

Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....

 before becoming a race engineer for both Clay Regazzoni

Clay Regazzoni

Gianclaudio Giuseppe "Clay" Regazzoni was a Swiss racing car driver. He competed in Formula One races from 1970 to 1980, winning five Grands Prix. His first win was the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in his debut season, driving for Ferrari. He remained with the Italian team until...

 and Carlos Reutemann

Carlos Reutemann

Carlos Alberto Reutemann , nicknamed "Lole", is an Argentine former racing driver , and later a politician in his native province of Santa Fe, for the Justicialist Party....

.

In 1984 Oatley was recruited by Carl Haas

Carl Haas

Carl A. Haas is an American auto racing impresario. He co-owned the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team in the IndyCar Series with the late Paul Newman and Mike Lanigan. He also owned Carl A...

 to work on the FORCE F1

Haas Lola

Team Haas Ltd. was an American Formula One team founded by Carl Haas and Teddy Mayer in 1984, which competed in the World Championship from to . The project was funded by Beatrice Foods and helped the team enter an agreement to use Ford engines for three seasons...

 project but the results were poor and the team withdrew from Formula One in .

Oatley joined the McLaren team shortly after leaving FORCE and worked alongside John Barnard

John Barnard

John Barnard is a race car designer and is currently working alongside Terence Woodgate designing high specification carbon fibre furniture....

 in the design office. Barnard was soon replaced by Gordon Murray

Gordon Murray

Prof. Gordon Murray , is a renowned designer of Formula One race cars and the McLaren F1 road car.-Early life:...

whose MP4/4 chassis almost completed a clean sweep of victories in 1988, and when Murray moved to the new McLaren road car project Neil Oatley was made Chief Designer, his cars securing titles in , , , and .

Oatley continued to work as Chief Designer at McLaren until 2003 when he became Executive Director of Engineering.