Reflecting their long-term and invaluable support of BEN, the automotive industry charity, Enterprise Rent-a-Car's latest initiative, The Enterprise Golf Day raised over £8,000 – a huge sum of money for a golf competition.
Bridgestone has announced the winner of what it describes as the brand’s biggest UK competition. Warwick motorist Tony Hamilton beat 1,218 other entrants to win an £8,000 Volkswagen Up! hatchback. He was automatically entered into the draw when he purchased a set of Bridgestone tyres from his local Britannia Tyres centre in Nuneaton. Bridgestone’s sales development executive Phil Berry said: “The competition exceeded all of our expectations, so much so that we extended it for a third month over the summer to cater for demand.
In March 2013, Michelin was confirmed as tyre supplier for the first two seasons of the new FIA Formula E Championship. Race fans attending the IAA show in Frankfurt this week have been amongst the first to see this new tyre up close; the unnamed, new generation 18-inch tyre was displayed fitted to the Spark-Renault SRT_01 car that will be used by all teams during the first year of this city-centre electric racing championship.
Stapleton's (Tyre Services) Ltd has teamed up with Giti Tire to launch a consumer competition featuring the exclusive Giti brand Primewell.
Any customer who buys a pair of Primewell tyres from a participating key dealer and answers a tyre safety question will be entered into a prize draw to win a new Citroen DS3 Sport, fitted with Primewell Sport 910 tyres.
Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone has dismissed whispers that Michelin is readying a move to supply the series in 2014. While it seems that the French manufacturer has confirmed some level of contact with the FIA – thought to be about changes it would require to the series’ regulations to supply its tyres – Ecclestone said this was irrelevant, since Pirelli has a contract with F1’s teams (FOM). He also restated his opposition to competition between tyre manufacturers.
20 year old Tatiana Calderón from Columbia has set herself the goal of competing in Formula One having entered into professional karting at eight. Now tyre supplier Hankook is supporting her development as part of its role as tyre supplier to the FIA Formula 3 European Championship, in which she is now competing.
Between 6 and 13 October, the World Solar Challenge 2013 will take place in Australia, and Bridgestone has signed up as title sponsor. This will be the 12th time the competition has taken place since 1987, and the Bridgestone World Solar Challenge 2013 will see a record 45 teams from 26 countries compete in a 3000-kilometre cross-country race using only solar energy to power the vehicles. The event will feature three separate classes – Adventure Class, which will showcase cars built for previous events; Cruiser Class, which will be judged by design practicality, and Challenger Class, which will compete for the title of the world's most efficient solar car.
Thousands of motorists are driving potentially dangerous cars as the number of vehicles on the road that have previously been written off increases. The National Association of Bodyshops (NAB) has previously called on the Competition Commission to review their position on write-offs during an investigation into the private motor insurance market.
However the Competition Commission say that they have no plans to review this further stating that despite the evidence they received during the investigation, they judged that write-offs were an issue relating to the supply of used cars and not related to the provision of Private Motor Insurance and related goods and services.
The Lotus Festival will be staged at Brands Hatch later this month, and following its signing of an exclusive three-year deal with the Lotus on Track Racing Drivers’ Club (LoTRDC) last year Avon Tyres will supply its track-oriented, road legal ZZR to a host of Lotus competitors. As part of the deal Avon is supplying ZZRs to competitors across its burgeoning race championships, including the Lotus Elise Trophy and Lotus Cup Europe, as well as the Lotus Cup UK.
The first production road car to be developed by Volvo’s Polestar Racing team went on sale in June 2013; Volvo chose the Australian market for a pilot launch of its four wheel drive S60 Polestar, and future introduction in other markets depends on how it is received in Australia. The Swedish manufacturer selected Bridgestone’s Potenza as original equipment, and the tyre will be fitted to the S60 Polestar in size 235/40 R19 96Y.
The introduction of an option tyre this year in DTM was something of an unknown quantity, as teams had no previous data or experience with which to predict its performance. With one set available only for the race, it was always going to be interesting to see how they would be used, and the tyre supplier to the German touring car series (competing in international locations) believes that its influence has had a positive effect on the action, heading into the second half of the season at the Moscow Raceway this weekend. Hankook says the softer compound Ventus Race Plus has allowed drivers to set faster lap times in the first 30-60km of use, before the tyre’s performance drops off to levels below those offered by the regular Ventus Race tyre. It is constructed to behave in this way purposely to allow for more tactical racing, and with five races won by five different drivers (albeit with one subsequently disqualified), the top five in the drivers’ standings within 24 points and all manufacturers with at least one race victory, Hankook argues that the tyre has helped make the series more competitive.
Hankook’s second quarter results show that the manufacturer is well-placed to take advantage of the anticipated gradual recovery of replacement markets in the next year and a half. Indeed, the 1.4 per cent increase in revenue growth indicates that the Korean manufacturer is already experiencing some upward momentum, this figure having declined in the previous two quarters. Deutsche Bank analyst Sanjeev Rana commented that the company’s ongoing product mix improvement and falling raw materials costs should combine with the American and European recovery to keep Hankook’s margins “resilient”, while the bank also expects its operating profit to “grow 18 per cent” year-on-year in in the second half of 2013.
Two biking fanatics have received prizes from Bridgestone’s motorcycle team, responding to contests conducted at a recent motorcycle festival, and on the company’s social networking pages. Katrina Rex beat dozens of men to win a set of premium Bridgestone radial bike tyres at the recent Shropshire Bike Festival, holding out tyres on her outstretched arms for a longer period of time than anyone else. Meanwhile, Steve Trudgeon from St Austell triumphed in a Bridgestone Facebook competition, earning a place at the Honda Ron Haslam Race School at Donington.
Bridgestone has taken its inflatable exhibition stand to the Warwickshire countryside for three days, where 129,000 visited Ragley Hall, Alcester to see around 900 exhibits at the CLA Game Fair Show. Featuring farming, shooting, fishing, archery and craft stands, the manufacturer says it presented a good opportunity to show off its tyres, including motorcycle, passenger car, all-weather and 4×4 ranges.
Leicester’s Sandeep Chudasama beat thousands of bikers across Europe to meet MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi in a Bridgestone promotion. He won the prize in the manufacturer’s ‘Mission Rossi’ tyre sales competition after purchasing a set of Battlax Sport Touring T30 tyres online from the Bike Tyres dealer in Leeds, after which he was automatically entered into the Mission Rossi giveaway. He flew out to Sachsenring, Germany for the latest round of the MotoGP championship with Bike Tyres’ centre manager Lance Jessop.
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