4 replies to this topic

[Lukin]

Terribly sad news to learn that Richard Divila (RDV) has passed away.
A fantastic career with so many successes.
But to me an incredibly open and approachable guy who was willing to help others with advice on this forum and others.
Very sad, will be missed!

[desmo]

Terribly sorry to hear this. He was one of the best posters here we've ever had, and not just an invaluable and generous source on the technical aspects of cars and racing, but a man of broad and deep knowledge, as anyone who spent much time interacting with him will know.

[Fat Boy]

I only knew him from here and a bit of back-and-forth we had offline. I never met him in person. He seemed like a genuinely good person. This bothers me more than I care to admit.

[Ben]

So this one's tough...

 

I first came across Ricardo on here when I was a student at Uni. Once he realised you were potentially good, he'd initiate some offline communication. Suddenly I had NISMO setup sheets and Prost F3000 stuff to look at and help me understand the world of racecar engineering. Fast forward and I'm at Dunlop and we finally met at Le Mans in 2008. A few years later I was in the Pescarolo truck with him and Henri discussing some tyre testing.

 

There were many emails and a lot of shared files on DropBox. Often discussing non racing stuff was as rewarding, such was his breath of knowledge and experience.

 

A few weeks ago I was researching live axle location (colleague has a clubmans car) and remembered the BTCC Primeras that Ricardo worked with had a novel beam axle location linkage. Email duly sent, I received a reply with a Racecar Engineering article and apologies that he couldn't share more "had a stroke on Wednesday" very matter of fact.

 

Wish I'd called him.

 

RIP to a mentor and a friend.

 

Ben

[pierrre]

use to exchangea a lot here as RDV...what an incredible man and assisted me on the Nissan GT-R LM video and then later giving it the thumbs up

 

pancreatic disease(some say cancer) and stroke, he was admitted to a hospital in paris according to someone who responded on his twitter

 

on may the 26th and july the 11th i had pestered him to do a book based on his experience, appreciation for words and writing...but he said he still had many races to go...how id wish he had done it. many said he always had so many stories to tell

 

rest in peace, forever remembered RDV69