Robin Herd, who passed away on Tuesday, was a quietly influential player in global motor sport for three decades, but he would have been the past person to tell you that.
Modest to a fault, a wistful smile would greet any mention of his significant work as designer of the early McLarens, a founding director of March and leader of the Oxfordshire company that went on to dominate Indycar in the late Eighties. Herd would shrug it off as readily as any reminder that he had achieved a double first in physics and engineering at Oxford.
A fascination with aerodynamics found an outlet at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough where, by the age of 24, Herd had become a Senior Scientific Officer working, among other things, on CFD for Concorde.