An Interview with Kevin Kalkhoven

Kevin Kalkhoven is an auto racing magnate. Mr Kalkhoven owns Cosworth, a British automotive engineering company founded in 1958. He has also founded companies which have gone onto win many races such as the Indy 500. He also happens to be an Old Whitgiftian. When Mr Kalkhoven visited Whitgift School on the 27th of February, I got the chance to interview him. He remarked he would only “answer my questions honestly”.

He remembers Whitgift as “being a very different school”. He remembers the school having “only six hundred boys” and having “no engineering department”. He remarked the school has “changed a lot” from being a “traditional english independent school”. He describes his memories of his time at Whitgift as “interesting, but it didn't give me the information I needed for my career, which [these days], pupils get.” He believes that “the key to success” is to “focus” and “decide what you want to do and put one hundred percent of your effort into it”.

When asked what inspired him to buy Cosworth in 2005, he quipped “It was cheap!” “It's a company in the United Kingdom with a great legacy, and I wanted to make sure that It was in good hands”. Mr Kalkhoven mentioned Cosworth’s biggest customer is General Motors, but “could we work with Ford [again]? Yeah. We’ll work with anyone!”. Mr Kalkhoven “loves research”. He has donated money to charities such as the Mayo Clinic, a medical research centre in Minnesota.

I asked Mr Kalkhoven “In a world where electrification is getting more prevalent everyday, where do you see Cosworth in the future?” He reacted by remarking “Well, first of all, I do not believe that statement. Certainly, there will be a movement towards [electrification], but I’d like to give you a problem which is the reality in countries like the United States. I live in an area called Lake Tahoe, which is about 200 miles from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, but it’s uphill. At night, with the lights on, with heating, going uphill in the cold [will mean] you will have to stop for three hours to charge. The journey only takes three hours! So certainly there will be a movement towards electrification, whether or not it will be universal is open for discussion.”

Mr Kalkhoven “absolutely!” sees a future for Formula 1 in a world moving towards electrification. He believes Formula E races are “slow, and if you have to change cars it's not my definition of racing”. He believes the FIA doesn’t hinder innovation in motorsport. “I think they come out with some of the most interesting ideas, particularly in the area of vehicle safety”. He believes that F1 “is becoming a lot more expensive!” He thinks that F1 becoming more advanced doesn’t make it less interesting; he remarked “Formula 1 by definition is very uninteresting!” He went on to say “You know who’s going to win and who won't start!”

He was inspired to win the 2013 Indianapolis 500 because “in the United States, it is the biggest event in motor racing”. When asked what he would have done had he not won, he sarcastically joked that he would have “kicked a dog”. He followed this up by saying he would have tried again. “We would have looked at a list of things that went wrong, and fixed them.” When asked where he thought motorsport will be in one-hundred years, Mr Kalkhoven quipped “At this moment I am seventy-five. Thinking one hundred years ahead, it's not really something I can do!”

Originally published on the 31st of March 2020 at https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/youngreporter/18348757.interview-kevin-kalkhoven-hussain-zaidi-whitgift-school/