After saving up enough pocket money to buy himself a go-kart to go racing around his local streets when he was 14, his parents feared he would have a bad accident with a real motor car on the streets and instead bought him a racing go-kart to drive on the local track, not realizing that Steve would actually get interested in motorsport as a result, going on to race in
Formula Ford throughout America's northwest. And it was after seeing an article in
Road & Track magazine about "
Chapman's Tubeless Wonder" (the
Lotus 25) in 1962, that Nichols decided he wanted to be a
Formula One car designer and from then on (aged 15) he tailored his education towards
mechanical engineering and achieving his goal. Nichols graduated from the
University of Utah in 1972, and reasoning that no professional racing team would want a green, straight out of university engineer, instead he found work as a development engineer at
Hercules Aerospace in Salt Lake City in 1973 where he would work for 4 years. While at Hercules he was part of the team that worked on stage three rockets for the
Trident missiles that were used by
United States Navy nuclear submarines. After this, Nichols then went to work for
Gabriel Shock Absorbers at the time when the company was looking to break into motorsport in the US with the
USAC Indycar circuit. At Gabriel, Nichols worked on designing
dampers that would eventually be used by the likes of
Al Unser,
Parnelli Jones,
Team Penske and
A. J. Foyt. In mid-1980 he moved into his ultimate goal in motorsport and joined
McLaren in Formula One. He had worked with English designer
John Barnard at
Chaparral in Indy racing designing dampers for the team, and had rung him looking for work in Formula One. At the time, Barnard had begun working with
Ron Dennis at his
Formula 2 team
Project Four Racing while they were in the process of their merger/takeover of McLaren. Barnard told Nichols that they had unsuccessfully searched all over Britain for someone willing to make his then revolutionary
Carbon Fibre monocoque for what would become the
McLaren MP4/1. Nichols then suggested his old employer Hercules who had been using carbon fibre in the aerospace industry for a number of years. Hercules was more than willing to do the work, while also getting their name on the McLaren F1 cars as a team sponsor. In , Nichols became the race engineer for
Niki Lauda and remained so until Lauda's retirement after . This included being Lauda's engineer during his 3rd and final World Championship winning season in while having to overcome a faster and younger new teammate in
Alain Prost (Lauda won by the smallest margin in F1 history, just 0.5 points). Following Lauda's retirement, Nichols became race engineer for World Champion
Keke Rosberg in and former
Ferrari driver
Stefan Johansson in . In late 1986 following the departure of John Barnard to Ferrari, team owner Ron Dennis named Nichols as the Chief Designer for both the 1987 and turbo cars, while Nichols also continued as one of the two race engineers within the team. His first car, the
McLaren MP4/3 powered by the turbocharged
TAG-
Porsche V6 engine, carried Alain Prost to three victories in 1987, the last of which being the
1987 Portuguese Grand Prix where Prost scored his 28th win, passing
Jackie Stewart's record of 27 that had stood since . Stefan Johansson (who was not really expected to win a race, and did not), scored five podium finishes during the season. At the end of the season, the MP4/3 had given McLaren second place behind
Williams in the Constructors' Championship.
McLaren MP4/4 Nichols' second car was the highly successful
McLaren MP4/4, powered by a turbocharged
Honda V6 rated at approximately (
Honda never gave out their true power figures and as such figures are often quoted from anywhere around 650 bhp to up to ). The MP4/4, driven by
Ayrton Senna (whom Nichols was also the race engineer for in both and ) and Alain Prost, almost completely dominated the 1988 season with 15 race victories from 16 races, as well as 15 pole positions. The only race the MP4/4 did not win was the
Italian Grand Prix which was won by
Gerhard Berger's
Ferrari. Berger also claimed the only non-McLaren pole of the year at the
British Grand Prix. McLaren won the 1988 Constructors' Championship by a then record 134 points from Ferrari, having wrapped up the title in Round 11 in
Belgium. Senna and Prost also finished the Drivers' Championship in first and second place, giving the talented
Brazilian his first World Championship. During the season, McLaren also scored a record ten 1-2 finishes from the seasons 16 races.
Dispute over design credit While some articles give credit to
Gordon Murray for the MP4/4's design and claim that it was based on Murray's earlier
Brabham BT55 for the 1986 season, many at McLaren, including former team manager
Jo Ramírez, and a number of McLaren's Design Office including the Project Leader on the Monocoque and front suspension Matthew Jeffreys, aerodynamicist
Bob Bell and engineer
Alan Jenkins, have pointed out that the MP4/4 was a development of the MP4/3 and that Murray, who became McLaren's Technical Director in 1987, had very little to do with the design of either of Nichols' cars. Commenting on the differences of the BT55 and MP4/4, Nichols remarked: Nichols suggested that Murray has tried to claim credit for the MP4/4 in the hopes that its reputation would overshadow that of the BT55's engine and gearbox issues: Senior design engineer Matthew Jeffreys also refuted Murray's claims of the Brabham being the basis of the MP4/4: Murray has long denied Nichols' involvement in the MP4/4's development, stating in an interview with
Motor Sport: "This thing about Steve Nichols being chief designer is the biggest load of rubbish you've ever heard. The MP4/4 was not designed by Steve Nichols, I can promise you that." Murray also threatened Nichols and Jeffreys with legal action over their written claims in the McLaren MP4/4 Owners’ Workshop Manual written by Steve Rendle and published by
Haynes.
Later career At the end of , Alain Prost asked Nichols to join him at
Ferrari in despite that in their 6 seasons together at McLaren (1984–89), Nichols had actually been the race engineer for each of Prost's teammates, including winning World Championships with Niki Lauda in 1984 and Ayrton Senna in 1988. In 1990, Ferrari used the
V12 powered
Ferrari 641 which was a development of another revolutionary John Barnard design, the
Ferrari 640 from 1989 (it was revolutionary in that instead of the usual manual transmission, the Ferrari had a then new for F1
Semi-automatic transmission). By the time Prost and Nichols arrived at Ferrari, John Barnard had left to begin work with the
Benetton team. Prost won five races and was a serious contender for the 1990 world title until a controversial collision triggered by Ayrton Senna put both drivers out of the race at the
Japanese Grand Prix. Nichols stayed at Ferrari until December 1991, dismayed by the chaos in the team compared to the "well oiled machine" he was used to at McLaren. Taking over as the teams Technical Director after Barnard's departure, Nichols collaborated on the design on the
Ferrari 642 and
643 used by the team in with Chief Designer Jean-Claude Migeot. The cars were largely unsuccessful, not winning a race with the 643 actually contributing largely to Prost not only having his first winless season since his rookie year in , but also in being fired from the team following the
1991 Japanese Grand Prix when he said
"a truck would be easier to drive than this car". The 643 had been a completely clean-sheet design rather than an update of Barnard's Ferrari 640 like the 641 and 642 were. He later joined
Sauber to help
Peter Sauber move into Formula One. In he moved to
Jordan as chief designer; later in he was back at McLaren as a technical consultant. He assisted McLaren back to the front of the grid and winning the World Championships in and . In he joined
Jaguar Racing as technical director. Although his success gave Jaguar their first podium in Monaco, Nichols left Jaguar in early 2002; he has not worked in Formula One since. ==Retirement==