Mo Nunn is perhaps best known today for engineering the cars of a number of CART champions such as Emerson Fittipaldi and Alex Zanardi and he now runs his own two-car CART team. However many people don’t realise the Nunn was a mean racer himself back in the days of the F3 1-litre screamers when he drove for the works Lotus team and then he subsequently became a constructor of F3 and F1 cars, the F3 cars in particular being very successful. Originally Nunn intended to race in F5000 in 1970 but when the drive fell through he decided to turn constructor instead, with backing from Bernard Lewis he built the first Ensign in a lock-up at the back of his bungalow! Such was the success of this first chassis in 1971 that orders for more soon came and Nunn had to obtain premises and begin producing the cars seriously. In 1973 Rikki von Opel who had been racing an F3 Ensign asked Nunn to build an F1 car for him and as a result Ensign withdrew from F3. Ensign continued in F1 until 1983 although lack of a proper budget meant the cars only ever showed flashes of promise, notably when Chris Amon and Clay Reggazzoni were driving.