Why is Banbury seemingly the hub of UK motorsport? Anybody who is familiar with the Thorpe Way/Overthorpe road area will know that the estate there is just full of race teams, almost every industrial unit has race transporter or two parked on it somewhere. But why there in particular?
Reasonably central for transport links, not full of thick people to do the work required, the bosses probably live in the Cotswolds and want to be close to home… etc etc
Probably due to the closeness of Silverstone too.
xichrisxi:
Probably due to the closeness of Silverstone too.
This,
I assume they pick Banbury in particular, because it has a large industrial area next to the M40, but the whole area has a fair few race teams and many companies (some of which take some finding as they’re tucked away in small units on farms in the back of beyond) who produce stuff for the motorsport and the car industry which they export round the World.
I suspect that splntering happens when work expands.
A company gets too big to keep all it’s specialist clients happy and a manager splits off and starts up a rival company?. He already has a home there and wants to poach a couple of emoloyees. It’s unlikely that they’d all want to sell up, move away from family and change kids’ schools so they’d only move next door.
There is a small town I know with 3 specialist plastics firms. Another pocket of specialisation, without any plastics mines nearby.
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There are a lot of technology companies in the area such as Ricardo. Aston Martin and Gaydon. Plus the locality of Warwick University, Volvo, Prodrive. AP and Bosch. As mentioned Silverstone is close, and MIRA and Millbrook is not so far away
Vaguely remember a tv program not so long back and the presenter stood on a hill near Silverstone and said 90% (can’t recall the exact figure but it was similar) of the entire F1 “industry” was within a 20 mile radius.
Quite impressive really.
Franglais:
There is a small town I know with 3 specialist plastics firms. Another pocket of specialisation, without any plastics mines nearby.Sent from my GT-S7275R using Tapatalk
There was me thinking Plastic was man made.
When the roadworks aren’t on Banbury to:
Silverstone 45mins
Donington Park 1Hr
Oulton Park 1hr30 - 2hrs
Brands Hatch 2hrs
Rockingham 2hrs
Thruxton 2.5 hrs
Castle Coombe 2hrs
Welsh mountains (rally stages) inside one hit of driving.
Keilder Forest. About the same.
Historically, with the exception of Ferrari, most world championship F1 teams have been UK and Midlands based too so the talent all gravitates into the same area. Look at where the Grand Prix has been held too, Brooklands, Goodwood, Aintree, Silverstone, Brands Hatch and Donington Park. The only one not almost local to Banbury is Aintree and thats only a couple of hours away.
Ferrari,
Torro Rosso
Sauber
The only three F1 teams not headquartered in the Midlands.
Prodrive set up there to be close to Aston Martin at Gaydon, their biggest customer. Now most UK based Aston Martin GT teams will be in or around Banbury too so that they can access factory support.
The last time the F1 Constructors World Championship went outside Buckinghamshire or Northamptonshire it went to Ferrari in 2008. That was the last time the drivers title went to a driver employed outside those two counties too, one Mr. L Hamilton who was working for a Woking based team at the time. Michael Schumacher won his last world championship in 2004. Since then one or both of the F1 World Championships has come to the UK in all but one year.
Then look at Le Mans. We’ve not been so successful there, Britain hasn’t won that one outright since 2003 when Bentley won it.
This year though the Mighty38, the Jackie Chan DC Racing car came second and won LMP2, run by Jota Sport, a british team. LM GTE Pro was won by the Aston martin factory cars from Banbury and LM GTE Am was won by the JMW Ferrari, based in Kent. Jota won P2 in 2014 too. 1993 was the last year that neither a British driver, nor a British registered team stood on a class podium at Le Mans.
Prodrive at Banbury have netted 7 World Cups or World Championships for Aston Martin in the five years of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
There are a lot of Motorsport teams in and around Banbury because the UK is the best in the world at racing, and thats where all the world champions cluster so everyone else does too.
CraigM:
Franglais:
There is a small town I know with 3 specialist plastics firms. Another pocket of specialisation, without any plastics mines nearby.Sent from my GT-S7275R using Tapatalk
There was me thinking Plastic was man made.
No it groes on trees from the same family as the spaghetti tree…
nsmith1180:
Ferrari,
Torro Rosso
SauberThe only three F1 teams not headquartered in the Midlands.
Mclaren are based in Woking, which is south of London. 
nsmith1180:
Then look at Le Mans. We’ve not been so successful there, Britain hasn’t won that one outright since 2003 when Bentley won it.
Not really been a serious British contender since then, the Aston was hopeless, both out in the first couple of laps, but plenty of the technology on the winning cars has come from Britian and the Audi car that won Le Mans for several years had a British engineer, Leena Gade lead the engineering team, she is the first female race engineer to win Le Mans, probably only, but where is her recognition outside a small motorsport circle, even many young women on motorsport courses don’t know who she is, but I would have thought she’d been a role model for them.
nsmith1180:
This year though the Mighty38, the Jackie Chan DC Racing car came second and won LMP2, run by Jota Sport, a british team. LM GTE Pro was won by the Aston martin factory cars from Banbury and LM GTE Am was won by the JMW Ferrari, based in Kent. Jota won P2 in 2014 too. 1993 was the last year that neither a British driver, nor a British registered team stood on a class podium at Le Mans.
Thanks for mentioning Jota, the 2014 LMP2 Le Mans win was a great achievement for a genuinely privateer team with a traditional “gentleman driver” in Simon Dolan. And very much an all British Success, with British team, literally by accident an all British driver line up and British built car and driveline. Oh and British tyre truckie. And an all British film crew, 
nsmith1180:
There are a lot of Motorsport teams in and around Banbury because the UK is the best in the world at racing, and thats where all the world champions cluster so everyone else does too.
And many of those companies have developed into R&D and hi precision engineering, where they are also World leading.
muckles:
nsmith1180:
Then look at Le Mans. We’ve not been so successful there, Britain hasn’t won that one outright since 2003 when Bentley won it.Not really been a serious British contender since then, the Aston was hopeless, both out in the first couple of laps, but plenty of the technology on the winning cars has come from Britian and the Audi car that won Le Mans for several years had a British engineer, Leena Gade lead the engineering team, she is the first female race engineer to win Le Mans, probably only, but where is her recognition outside a small motorsport circle, even many young women on motorsport courses don’t know who she is, but I would have thought she’d been a role model for them.
Leena is a fine example of our excellent engineers, now very high up in Bentley Customer Racing.
But Howden Haynes should also be mentioned, another British race engineer that took Audi to several overall wins and the man that designed the dry break drinks system used in everything from TCR cars to F1 and P1.
But I would argue that while we’ve not had a serious contender overall for the victory since the GLORIOUSNESSLY-LOVELYNESS that was the Aston Martin Lola V12 P1 be-still-my-beating-heart-mobile we have had contenders all throughout the classes for years. I still maintain that the AMR-One with the V12 in it, or even the V8 from the Vantage sufficiently up-tuned, could have been a contender too.
Off the top of my head:
Aston Martin Racing
Beechdean AMR
JMW Motorsport
Gulf Racing UK
Ford Chip Ganassi UK
Jota Sport
RML
Beechdean Mansell
Chamberlin Synergy
Team LNT
Rollcentre Racing
RAM Racing
All teams that have either won or had a damned good crack at winning in the classes. And lets be honest, P1 is just a bragging match between manufacturers. Its P2 and GT that really matters.
nsmith1180:
muckles:
nsmith1180:
Then look at Le Mans. We’ve not been so successful there, Britain hasn’t won that one outright since 2003 when Bentley won it.Not really been a serious British contender since then, the Aston was hopeless, both out in the first couple of laps, but plenty of the technology on the winning cars has come from Britian and the Audi car that won Le Mans for several years had a British engineer, Leena Gade lead the engineering team, she is the first female race engineer to win Le Mans, probably only, but where is her recognition outside a small motorsport circle, even many young women on motorsport courses don’t know who she is, but I would have thought she’d been a role model for them.
Leena is a fine example of our excellent engineers, now very high up in Bentley Customer Racing.
But Howden Haynes should also be mentioned, another British race engineer that took Audi to several overall wins and the man that designed the dry break drinks system used in everything from TCR cars to F1 and P1.
But I would argue that while we’ve not had a serious contender overall for the victory since the GLORIOUSNESSLY-LOVELYNESS that was the Aston Martin Lola V12 P1 be-still-my-beating-heart-mobile we have had contenders all throughout the classes for years. I still maintain that the AMR-One with the V12 in it, or even the V8 from the Vantage sufficiently up-tuned, could have been a contender too.
Off the top of my head:
Aston Martin Racing
Beechdean AMR
JMW Motorsport
Gulf Racing UK
Ford Chip Ganassi UK
Jota Sport
RML
Beechdean Mansell
Chamberlin Synergy
Team LNT
Rollcentre Racing
RAM RacingAll teams that have either won or had a damned good crack at winning in the classes. And lets be honest, P1 is just a bragging match between manufacturers. Its P2 and GT that really matters.
When I said serious contender, I did mean LMP1-H and really it’s only between 2 or 3 teams and next year will be 1 team or maybe none. I think Le Mans needs that top class for the manufacturers to win and bring the kudos of their backing Le Mans and making it more of a show in the paddock for the punters, leaving the LMP2 category for the privateer teams backed by a “gentleman driver”, which sort of harks back to a long forgotten time, but LMP2 seems to be going to professional driver line-ups.
Don’t write off LM 2018 yet, nor the 2018-19 Super Season. Ginetta are flogging P1 cars like they are Mars bars. SMP Dallara have sold a couple too, ByKolles is back with the CLM, there is talk of Oreca dusting off the Rebellion R-One even if Valliante Rebellion don’t want to run it. Throw in TwoYotas and we could well have a nine car slugging match for pole and the win.
Now if Toyota self destruct again its a shame but if they don’t we can guess who is going to win. If they do though, its anyones guess and if Gazoo do more than drop a wheel nut in a pit stop you could well find that Toyota are still going to be hunting for that LM win in 2019.
Back in the 70s 80s when Silverstone stopped being a MOD standby site , it then got developed and industrial units were built .
As specialist technology developed in motorsport premises were needed and the towns of Banbury , Northampton and Milton Keynes offered cheaper land and favorable breaks from local authorities and easy road links .
Where one company or team goes others tend to follow . Penske were early in the area and others are now on the same road . Mercedes power trains are now round the corner from Ilmor who built the original Merc race engines .
If the planning hadn’t been delayed for so long then Maclaren would have been based at Lydden in kent and how many more associated people would have followed to that area .
Banbury does have a high concentration of motorsport and motor industry companies it’s a pity it is so unfriendly for truckers with regards to facilities.
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