Michael Royce
01-21-2014, 11:54 AM
I am sad to report that Formula SAE has lost another icon. Bill Mitchell died at his home in Mooresville, North Carolina last Wednesday.
Bill had been one of the senior Design Judges at the FSAE competitions in the USA for 15 years, and sponsored the Rookie Team award, often with a copy of his “Racing by the Numbers” software.
Bill was a mathematician by training with degrees from CalTech and Stanford. He started in motor sports as a spectator, followed by several years as a flagger/corner worker/marshal with the San Francisco Region of the SCCA, for whom he also wrote a column in their magazine, The Wheel. This led to award-winning articles in the SCCA’s Sports Car magazine. To the end, Bill had a subtle way with the written word.
In the early 80’s, Bill put his mathematics expertise to work on some of the first personal computers and began the development of his "Racing by the Numbers" program to calculate suspension geometry. And so began his involvement as a race engineer starting out in SCCA Club Racing and progressing through CART with Chip Ganassi’s team and TransAm with Tom Kendall and Roush Racing, and others.
In the last few years, he has focused his time on his William C. Mitchell Software business.
Bill was gentle and generous, and will be remembered as such, not only by those who knew him through Formula SAE, but by the North American motor sports community in general.
Bill had been one of the senior Design Judges at the FSAE competitions in the USA for 15 years, and sponsored the Rookie Team award, often with a copy of his “Racing by the Numbers” software.
Bill was a mathematician by training with degrees from CalTech and Stanford. He started in motor sports as a spectator, followed by several years as a flagger/corner worker/marshal with the San Francisco Region of the SCCA, for whom he also wrote a column in their magazine, The Wheel. This led to award-winning articles in the SCCA’s Sports Car magazine. To the end, Bill had a subtle way with the written word.
In the early 80’s, Bill put his mathematics expertise to work on some of the first personal computers and began the development of his "Racing by the Numbers" program to calculate suspension geometry. And so began his involvement as a race engineer starting out in SCCA Club Racing and progressing through CART with Chip Ganassi’s team and TransAm with Tom Kendall and Roush Racing, and others.
In the last few years, he has focused his time on his William C. Mitchell Software business.
Bill was gentle and generous, and will be remembered as such, not only by those who knew him through Formula SAE, but by the North American motor sports community in general.