Damian Harty is the mad scientist behind some of the most technically advanced automotive projects on the planet. Heading up Prodrive's dynamics engineering team, he is responsible for such gadgetry as the ATD system (more in future blogs), the fabulous P2 and countless other performance gizmos.

He has two degrees in Automotive Engineering and is working on a third. He once wrote the equations of motion for a car on the walls of the log cabin bar in the middle of the Suzuka circuit in Japan; it was his idea of graffiti. "It seemed like a good idea at the time but the details are somewhat hazy now", he says of it. He has worked for Prodrive since 1997 and before that worked for various consultancies and for Ford. He describes his job as "making cars stop and steer better" and has even written a book about it, but has yet to note girls flocking to him at parties as a result. "Yeah, normally they just flock right off when I start about it", he says. At least that's what he tells us.

He's clearly crazy, but he's also clearly a bit bright! He's going to be sharing with us all the secrets about why our cars do what they do, and how to make them do what you want!