Silverstone [United Rubber (PVT) Ltd.]
Consumer voting for the 2012 Motor Codes Garage of the Year opened today (Friday 24 February) with a four-page special published in The Sun. The award has changed slightly in 2012, with the addition of award categories reflecting large and small garages. Motor Codes has also gained support from a headline competition sponsor, Havoline.
Pirelli has supplied its first MINI Challenge event at the MotorSport Vision Racing Media Day. Hosted by Brands Hatch on Tuesday, former MINI Challenge champion Lee Allen in a Pirelli-branded MINI John Cooper Works among others demonstrated the tyres to gathered media representatives. For the Challenge’s drivers, this was the first chance to try out the new Pirelli tyres, and thanks to damp morning conditions were able to sample both the Pirelli 225/625-17 WH wet tyre and the 225/625-17 DH slick tyre; the latter used as the track dried out in the afternoon. There are two classes within the MINI Challenge: the turbocharged JCW class and the Club class. The Pirelli RX5 15” intermediate tyre is also used for the less powerful Club class. The first round of the championship takes place at Silverstone on 14 April.
Marangoni has agreed a three-year title sponsorship deal with the UK-based Production BMW Championship. The race cars, all based on BMW 3 Series models, will feature significant Marangoni and Kwik Fit branding and will race on 195/50 R15 82V Marangoni Zeta Linea Sport tyres, a track oriented version of Marangoni’s popular Zeta Linea road spec tyre.
Taking into consideration that Marangoni tyres are only available through Kwik Fit in the UK, the race series will become known as The Marangoni Tyres Production BMW Championship, in association with Kwik Fit. Kwik Fit has reportedly “fully embraced” this new agreement and will be supplying the tyres to all race competitors.
Japanese tyre manufacturer, Yokohama has been selected as the control tyre provider for the 2012 and 2013 seasons of the FIA Formula Two championship. Run by MSV and headed by former Formula One driver, Dr Jonathan Palmer, Formula 2 is recognised as a stepping stone to Formula One for aspiring single seat racers. The adoption of Yokohama as control tyres means the addition of a second FIA championship to the Japanese brand's portfolio; it has provided the control tyres for the FIA World Touring Car Championship since 2006.
HiQ Openshaw has announced the recruitment of a new mechanic; while this may not be the day’s biggest news story, its relevance becomes clearer when we consider that the east-Manchester branch is the first of the network’s 150 centres to recruit a woman in that position. The centre took on Dominyka Kasponyte after she approached the garage looking to further her early career working as an apprentice mechanic. Kasponyte, from Gorton, joins a team of nine men at the centre bringing with her various training qualifications including an NVQ and a national diploma. HiQ says she joins “a growing group of women who have taken on roles from centre management to directorship across the network.”
2011 was Kumho’s ninth and final year as official supplier to the Formula 3 Euro Series, for which the company created a new tyre with stiffer construction and softer tread compound. The intention was to create a cover with a more significant performance peak coupled to a reduction in grip after just a few laps, what Kumho views as the type of cycle F3’s aspiring Grand Prix drivers need to cope with if they are to make it to the pinnacle of motorsport. The product helped competitors to break lap records achieved on the previous tyre.
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Stapleton was literally bristling with moustaches last month. No the company did not step back into the seventies or make a new fashion statement. Instead the efforts of some 30 of Stapleton’s staffers aimed to put the fun into fundraising for the phenomenon known as Movember – the annual moustache-growing frenzy that raises money and awareness for men’s health issues such as prostate cancer and other cancers affecting men.
Malaysian news agency Bernama reports that Silverstone Bhd intends to begin exporting tyres to Brazil and Argentina early in 2012. Speaking with the agency at the launch of the company’s Atlantis V7 passenger car tyre, Silverstone CEO Paul Chan said the tyre maker, who was acquired by Toyo Tire & Rubber last year, expects to export more than 10,000 tyres per month to Brazil and Argentina.
The 2011 Avon Tyres British GT champions, Jim and Glynn Geddie, and the 2011 Cooper Tires British F3 Series champion, Felipe Nasr, have been honoured at the SRO awards evening in Oxfordshire. Cooper Avon has enjoyed another successful season of supporting the events, celebrating a joint landmark with the British Formula Three International Series – Cooper Avon’s thirtieth and the championship’s sixtieth – and seeing busy grids for the GT series. Cooper Avon is signed up with both championships until at least 2014.
The HiQ fast fit network says it is “well and truly tickled pink” with Dunlop British Touring Car Championship fans, whose clamour for official memorabilia helped raise £6,000 for Breast Cancer Care at Silverstone. For the third time this season, the Teams' Championship sponsor set up its pink stand and did a brisk trade in HiQ hats, large foam spanners and all number of T-shirts and goody bags. Through their efforts the HiQ team, together with the pink ladies Beverley Edwards, who won this year’s national grid girl competition, managed to boost the amount raised this season past the £15,000 mark. In total, HiQ has raised more than £80,000 for Breast Cancer Care since partnering with the charity in 2009.
The five-year plan for Toyo Tire & Rubber’s Nitto brand leading up to 2015 is to increase sales volume some 250 per cent from its current level of 6.75 million tyres per annum, an increase that will see the Nitto brand’s proportion of total Toyo sales grow from nine to 15 per cent. To achieve this, the tyre maker intends to boost sales in its established North American market plus introduce the brand into other regions, including Asia, South America and Oceania.
A self proclaimed ‘basic Basingstoke housewife’ will be transformed into a glamorous grid girl for the day after winning a prestigious motorsport competition at Silverstone with the HiQ fast fit network. Mother-of- three Beverley Edwards was chosen as HiQ’s Pink Grid Girl following an intense online vote (she was 149 votes ahead of the nearest rival), meaning she will line up with Team Aon, representing one of their three drivers on the day.
Maxxis, the official partner of the British Drift Championship, has reported that the organisers of this series have acclaimed the 2011 season as “the best in the championship’s history” thanks to overwhelming support for all three classes. According to the company, such was the level of skill demonstrated over the past six months that there was everything to play for at the final round, held at the Nissan factory in Sunderland, and some very close battles provided a fitting end to the campaign.
It’s said to have required “much deliberating, cogitating and digesting,” yet the shortlist for HiQ's national grid girl competition is now ready. The fast fitter says this year’s competition received an overwhelming response from grid girl wannabes all over the UK. According to HiQ marketing manager Geraldine McGovern, the company was “overwhelmed with entries and it was a tough decision shortlisting the final ten.”
“Compared with previous tracks such as Imola and Spa, Silverstone is very different because it has a lot of high speed corners requiring high downforce settings on the cars,” says Jean-Felix Bazelin, Dunlop Motorsport’s general manager. The brand is hoping for an advantage in its home leg of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup at Silverstone for its fifth round on 9-11 September. The Silverstone 6 Hours takes place just over an hour away from the brand’s Birmingham base where tyres for all forms of two and four wheel motorsport around the world are produced.
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