Avon’s Motorsport Season Opens at Easter with British GT Championship

Avon is looking forward to another season of motorsport, opening on Easter weekend as the title sponsor of the British GT Championship. The brand is the title sponsor and sole tyre supplier of the prestigious Championship for the fifth consecutive season, with cars built by manufacturers such as Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lotus and Porsche set to line up on the grid this year.

“Things are looking positive in the Avon Tyres British GT Championship this year with a growing number of entrants coming into the top GT3 category, while the creation of the new G4 class should see the second half of the field increase in numbers, as well as quality,” said Julian Baldwin, managing director of Cooper Tire Europe, the parent company of Avon Tyres.

Last year’s championship saw a high standard of racing, especially from brothers David and Godfrey Jones, who took three outright victories at the wheel of their Team Pyro-prepared Preci-Spark Ascari KZR1 on the way to the 2009 GT3 title. The GT3 class provided unpredictability and a host of different winners thanks to the championship’s ‘balance of performance’ rules, while in GT4 there was a clean set of wins for the Ginetta chassis, with champion Jody Firth and his driving partner, Nigel Moore.

Avon says its motorsport interests will continue to stretch into multiple forms of racing. The brand will continue as the official tyre supplier to the FIA Formula 2 Championship, on a Williams-built car that will this year benefit from a series of development work carried out over the winter months to make it considerably quicker than in 2009. Elsewhere, in open competition Avon will provide rubber to the FIA European Rallycross Championship. The manufacturer will supply control tyres to a wide range of championships including the Formula Palmer Audi series, plus all of Caterham’s official racing in the UK.

Avon traces its GT roots back to 1959 when Stirling Moss led the Aston Martin team to the World Sportscar Championship title, including a dominant first and second finish at Le Mans 24hrs.