Thorney Motorsport Sponsors

We consider racing and race development travel hand in hand with our road car tuning operation, what we learn from one we apply to the other which means our approach to sponsorship differs from most race teams. We don't simply use whatever supplier or product we can get a deal on, we carefully select and work with all of our racing partners as these are the same partners for our road car tuning operation. This means that if we use a certain application or part we use it beacuse we know it is the best possible; we race to win and we expect our road tuning customers to expect the same.

This also means our road car tuning recomendations are not just developed on our own road cars but also as a result of a detailed and extensive race testing program, racing is extra-ordinarily taxing on componants and vehicles, if we can develop the product to survive racing then it will be well engineered to deal with road and track work on a road car.

Competition & Road Fuel
Our relationship with Greenergy began some years ago when we began formally testing the fuel manufacturers premium fuels and the claims they were making. An eight month test (full details can be seen in our news section on the right hand side of this page) demonstrated that the Tesco 99 Octane fuel out performed all the other fuels so we began recommending and racing with it. We have continued to test all the fuels on the market (including race fuels) and we remain convinced that the Tesco 99 Octane fuel is the best in the market, from a purely selfish point of view if a customer is running decent fuel in their car it makes our role in tuning it for extra performance that much easier.

Greenergy (the company which actually makes and supplies Tesco with the fuel) have come on board this year with a separate deal for the race team, we will continue to test the road fuels at the same time test and race on their road and MSA Approved race fuel.

Westcoast / Apple Inc.

Modern race cars are extensions of modern road cars, ie they are getting more and more reliant on computers and technology for their performance, gone are the days where the pit crew need just spanners, now we need laptops and high speed data lines as well. We’ve been looking for a technology partner for some time, however the problem is that most technology companies only have their own systems to promote in racing we have to adopt a ‘best of breed’ approach – whatever ever works the best we use, regardless of brand.

With our racing program we have two issues, firstly we needed a technology partner that we could work with in selecting the right architecture to use for the ECU work and data logging that we use from Race Technologies but also the heavy use of video imagery from the in car cameras, this meant a partner who would look at the needs we have and provide a solution not just supply kit. In stepped Westcoast in association with Apple Inc.

Westcoast are one of the UK’s largest IT distribution companies, in other words they supply the retailers that you and us rely on when shopping for toys. This means they deal with multiple brands and technologies and their depth of knowledge on these services has to be good enough to teach the guys who sell it – they know their stuff. We supplied Westcoast with a list of requirements (some of which were of the ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could.....’ variety) and they came back with one word – Apple.

Now I personally have not been an Apple user, I’ve got a PC at home and an Archos as my portable MP3/Video player so to say I needed convincing is a bit of an understatement. However people are right when they say once you’ve gone Apple you won’t go back – I’m hooked – we are now completely reliant on their architecture. We use MacBook laptops for all the race car work as they are brilliant in dealing with both PC related software requirements as well as to deal with the video files we use both for data collection as well as PR. We use Ipods for video collection and display, at each circuit we have a secure high speed network using the Apple Airport and data back up via the amazing Apple Time Capsule. As part of our racing promotion we will be releasing in car footage of all the races that will be available via You Tube , iTunes, and iPlayer – unique in motorsport.

All this technology is useless without the support to use it and Westcoast are supreme in this respect; dedicated teams of people who specialise in technology types with one of the largest dedicated Apple teams in the UK.....we’re even making up questions to see if we can fool them – no luck yet.

We can't say enough about how strongly we feel on the KW product. We've worked with numerous suspension suppliers over the years and KW leave them all behind in terms of product development and attention to detail. We've worked with KW for some time on developing a complete new range of E46 M3 suspension options and our E46 M3 race car has been central to that development, Variant 3, CLubsport and Competition are all at the very top of the market in terms of quality, build and performance.

In addition to KW's extensive BMW experience (they own their own M3's which live at the Nurburgring) we have worked closely to develop a complete range of Vauxhall/Opel applications ranging from lowering springs to full competition set ups. These will all be made available through our growing network of Performance Centres within the Vauxhall dealership network. Each level of these upgrades have been developed on our own Vauxhall Corsa, Astra and Vectra road cars and on our Astra VXR-R and Corsa SR-R race cars.

Our partnership with Recaro is a new one for us, over the years we've been fitting replacement Recaro seats to M3 CSL's and have always been impressed with the fit, the quality and the sheer comfort they offered in a race seat even when used on the road, over and over an owner would come in with the Recaro (Profi SPG usually) and ask us to fit them along with harness's etc.

Fast forward to Autosport and we asked Simon and Leyton to have a wonder round and let us know what seat most suited them for their cars and lo and behold they both come back with the same name - Recaro, funny that. The combination of the fit and quality of the seats together with the drivers being pretty unequivocal in what they wanted makes it an easy choice for us to partner with the only real choice.

We'll be developing a few ideas an options for both BMW's and Vauxhalls including a complete drive in/out deal for complete M3/CSL interiors utilising our new Safety Devices Cages, Schroth harness's and Recaro seats along with a few options for Vauxhall interior changes and track day preparation. Recaro are also providing us with a new pitwall seat arrangement so we'll be the only team actually comfortable for the Britcar 24 Hour we plan to enter this year.

Rays Engineering is another name new to us and new to the BMW World in the UK. We've been looking for a high end race wheel for the BMW range for some time (especially since BBS went to the wall last year) and through our connections in the Japanese tuning and racing market we were repeatedly referred to the same name over and over again - Rays.

Rays are a name that are synonimous with the Japanese car market, they are OEM to many manufacturers but importantly they are the only choice for the higher tuned Skylines, Subarus and Hondas and are the official supplier to the Williams F1 and Seat BTCC teams. In short they are astounding wheels but not exactly budget.

We've been running our road tuning customers on BMW CSL wheels for some time but we lacked a proper fitment for the M3 that we could recommend for road and track. By working with Rays we now have custom fitment E46 and E36 M3 wheels that are perfect for the job - road or track, track day or race.

We've been using Race Technology's DL90 and DL1 data loggers for years and the equipment is rapidly becoming an essential pice of race equipment (in Britcar they are compulsory) but over the years the company has developed a range of extensions and features that were simply too good to ignore.

All three of our race cars run with Race Technology DL1 dataloggers but will also run with their new Dash2 instrumentation which is a simple connection to the DL1. Under Dunlop SportMaxx rules we must run standard instrumentation but as the seats are all mounted to the floor of the chassis the drivers can't see the dials and even on the BMW the amount of information from the standard instruments is woefully inadequate for racing. The Dash2 is the smallest, lightest single panel dash and is easily mounted to the steering column on all the cars providing full instrumentation, in car data and laptimes - perfect.

Race Technology's latest development is also hugely exciting. We use our racing program to promote our National chain of Performance Centres and after each race we distribute photography of each round to the centres for use in their local advertising. We've long wanted to distrubute in car video footage as well but all the current offerings the process is too drawn out, with the Video overlay system it is done in minutes.

One of our latest Performance Centres who are now able to offer the full range of Thorney Motorsport Vauxhall upgrades, Pentagon Vauxhall Burton are the perfect example of dealership mentality - mad keen petrol heads.

One of our longest partnerships, Superchips reputation seems to be one of a generic chip tuner with limited experience of enhanced development and nothing could be further from the truth. Their depth of experience and sheer technical skill means that we couldn't ask for a better technical partner on ECU tuning.

The two companies work closely to develop all of our re-mapping on all of our models which Thorney Motorsport retain complete exclusivity. Superchips benefits from our extensive testing and development regime and track and race development and we benefit from their inherent skill and knowledge base.

Together we develop various stages of tuning for all the models we specialise in with enhanced ECU mapping for exhausts, induction, engine work as well as specific custom maps for race cars tuneable to circuit and weather conditions.

We all concentrate on the glamorous side of motorsport; the racing, the sponsorship, imagery but bottom line is that what we do is work on cars. Some time ago we needed to buy a whole load of race equipment for the team and we tested all the suppliers on a sale or return basis and despite some of the technicians absolute belief that Snap On would win hands down the Teng Tools product came out on top; we subsequently bought two complete kits, a fair few add ons and all for 1/3 price of Snap On - no brainer.

Since then we have got to know the company and the depth of their product range and in all the use we've had from the tools we've never had a failure yet - thats impressive. For 2008 we have adopted the Teng Tools range and will be offering it in our on line shop and directly to the Vauxhall network via our Performance Centres.

Its no good.....the real reason we like Teng? Kids just love the 'Devil Eyes' logo - looks cool on the race cars :)