Frank Dernie (born 3 April 1950 in Newark, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom) is a designer of Formula One cars and a Tecnhical Director of Lotus, Ligier and Arrows.
While he was a third-year student in Mechanical Engineering, he managed to convince the university to let him design a hypothetical race car for himself, providing him with the necessary resources. To do this, he also developed software to optimize the suspension: it was the first time in the history of motorsport that computer science had been applied for this purpose.
After graduating, he joined David Brown Ltd, owner of Aston Martin, because he wanted to join the latter's racing team, but shortly afterwards Aston Martin was sold and Frank Dernie remained at David Brown Ltd in the Noise and Vibration section of the Research and Development department. He then moved to a similar department at Garrard so that he could continue to be involved in motorsport, albeit from the outside.
At the end of 1976, he was hired by Hesketh as Chief Designer, where he designed his first Formula One car, the 308E, which raced in 1977 and 1978. At the end of that year, he moved to Williams, where he assisted Patrick Head, inventing active suspensions in 1987 and implementing the first data loggers on Formula One cars in 1988. In 1989, before the start of the Formula One championship, he moved to Lotus where he became Technical Director, then in 1991 he joined Benetton to assist Ross Brawn. At the beginning of 1992, he was hired by Ligier as Technical Director, then moved to Arrows in the same role in 1996 shortly before the start of the racing season. In 1997, Frank Dernie temporarily left Formula One to take on the role of Technical Director at Lola in IndyCar, before returning to Williams as a consultant engineer in 2003. In February 2007, he left that team and in August 2007 joined Toyota, where he remained until the team's retirement in 2009, dealing with aerodynamic and chassis-related matters.