Simon McBeath is a freelance racecar aerodynamics writer and designer. Since 1997 he has produced regular technical articles for Racecar Engineering, having started his freelance career with the much-missed Cars & Car Conversions in 1993. Motorsport aerodynamics is a specialist topic, and a long term arrangement with ANSYS UK has enabled, through his published work, unique aerodynamics insights using their amazing CFD software. From 2006-2020 Simon managed and ran a relationship between Racecar Engineering and MIRA that provided regular wind tunnel experiences published in a monthly column called Aerobytes.

Simon is also the principal of The Wing Shop, through which he has had close links with DJ Engineering Services Ltd (a.k.a. DJ Racecars) since 1997, and under the The Wing Shop brand he designed the racecar wings superbly manufactured in autoclaved carbon composite by them. Click on the links (left) or the logos (right) for further information.

He has also written technical motorsport books. Until 2014 three titles were available from Haynes Publishing, and following their withdrawal from the market sector Simon signed up with Veloce Publishing, and a third edition of Competition Car Aerodynamics was published in Spring 2015. Competition Car Composites followed in 2016, and Competition Car Data Logging may come along again in the future.

He is now a retired member of The Guild of Motoring Writers. He has also written on a variety of other topics, including travel and meteorology.

From 1997 until 2015 he worked for Gurston Down Hillclimb near Salisbury in Wiltshire as the Press Officer for the organising club, the British Automobile Racing Club (South Western Centre) and continued layout of event programmes until September 2017.

As a successful competitor on the UK national hillclimb scene from 1979 until 2003 Simon also worked as a licenced Instructor at the Gurston Down Hillclimb Drivers School until 2015. That same year he made a competitive return to the cockpit driving a Swift SC92F in hillclimbing's Pre-1994 Formula Ford class and he won the class in the Gurston Down Hillclimb Championship in 2015/16/17 as well as the first two Gurston Down 'FF Fest' events in 2016/17. In 2018 he competed in events at Prescott and Loton Park as well, finishing second in the Midland Hillclimb Championship class and winning the National MSA Hillclimb Leaders Championship class before deciding to retire from the sport on that national champonship class-winning high at the final event of 2018!

Now semi-retired from work, Simon continues to provide technical support to DJ Engineering wing customers, offering help with wing selection from our portfolio and, if required, providing assistance with designing a full aerodynamics package to SM Designs/DJ Engineering wing customers. He also continues to write articles for Racecar Engineering on CFD-based aerodynamics projects through his SM AeRoTechniques (SMART) brand.