For 2016 Thorney Motorsport are Yamaha’s official YXZ1000 race team and technical partner. In this multi year deal we will be responsible for Yamaha’s official team YXZ1000 race cars for the UK and for devleoping the international, FIA approved, race cars for competition Worldwide.
This partnership brings Yamaha’s expertise in UTV design and manufacturing together with Thorney Motorsports extensive experience in developing and racing competition UTV race cars. In addition to developing and racing the factory YXZ1000R cars we will also be responsible for the Yamaha YXZ1000R Experience days where members of the public are able to race the cars round our specialy designed off road race track near the famous Silverstone circuit and also for the promotion at shows and events of the new YXZ1000R cars. The relationship goes back to the tried and trusted partnership in motorsport – win on Sunday, buy on Monday.
As part of this partnership Yamaha are supporting all new drivers of their YXZ1000 race cars in a new Yamaha Driver of the Year competition; any competitor of a UK supplied YXZ1000R car is automatically entered into a competition where their race results are collated accross all the eligible championships with the most successful drivers winning Yamaha prizes including a pair of VIP tickets to the MotoGP.
Full details of the Yamaha YXZ1000R Racing program, the YXZ1000 Experience and Yamaha Driver of the year can be found on this dedicated website:
As well as Yamaha we are lucky enough to welcome back some long term partners of the team as well as ome exciting new partners to work with. All of our partners support the team either financially or we are fortunate enough to be able to use their parts and products as an integral part of the cars development. Whilst we are now fully funded, we are always interested in creating new partnerships, the costs are not as large as you’d expect.
Corporate Partners
Dash Witness
With the proliferation of insurance scams and ‘crash and run’ schemes designed to rob you of your insurance bonus there has been an explosion of dash camera systems available to protect you in the event of a crash on the road. With so many available its hard to know what to pick so we are grateful of the support of Dash Witness. Dash Witness specialise in supplying the best choice and quality of dash mounted cameras for road, race and commercial vehicles, we fitted them to some of our vehicles and the safety net they provide in the event of an incident is invaluable. We now offer the complete range for fitting to customer cars and run them in the race cars.
Badgers Oak Stud
Whilst it may appear strange to have a stud farm as a team partner the relationship makes a lot of sense when you consider our new extensive corporate entertainment side to the Yamaha relationship. As part of our Yamaha role we are running a series of driver days and corporate events using the YXZ1000R race cars, these events, obviously off road in nature fit perfectly with the high end corporate World of eventing. With Badgers Oak Stud we are able to cross promote the brands and mutually particiapte in corporate events to a new group of potential customers, partners and friends.
Stealth eMountain Bikes
A new subsidiary of Thorney Motorsport, Stealth are the manufacturers of the most extreme electric bikes on the planet. Most ebikes are, well, dull – 250w, pedal assisted power units limited to 15mph – not exactly exciting, however the Stealth is on another World – 50mph, full off road mountain bike with a 50 mile range and (in road mode) completely road legal with no requirements for insurance or number plates. They are in effect a hybrid of an MTB and a MX bike – one that can go anywhere.
Why did we get involved in eMTB’s? Well, come and ride one, if you’re not mentally trying to work out how to buy one after 30 seconds on one then you have no pulse.
4x4xgun.com
Another Thorney Motorsport subsidiary and one that has grown entirely out of motorsport partnerships. With all of our corporate partnerships as part of the deal you get a ‘partners day’, this is a day out with some team members experiencing some of the race cars and we usually simply did this at a track day. After a few years of doing this in all got a bit samey so we decided to create a unique day out as a thank you to our partners where they got to race about in our Artic Cat Wildcats and Yamaha ATV’s round our own offroad race track as well as blind fold driving and combined that with some dynamic shooting – run and gun as its sometimes called where you run about with firearms shooting targets that blow up, fall over etc.
After the first few days like this every single partner asked if they could buy more days and use the event as corporate entertainment or team building and 4x4xgun.com was born. The days are arranged for groups between 5 and 20 at a time and you can have a full day of driving race buggies about as well as shooting semi-automatic rifles and shotguns – it really is as fun as it sounds.
Supplier Partners
Toyo Tyres
Toyo have long been a favourite of ours for both our road cars and our off road models but last year some testing on the Arctic Cat Wildcat created the impetutus for us to persue Toyo for a partnership deal – they really worked that well. For all of our UK competition we will be running the Toyo All Terrain tyre and each official YXZ1000R race car will be supplied with a full set – ready for competition. On circuit our BMW and Vauxhall GTC Astra race cars will run on the new R888R tyres and our track cars – BMW M4, BMW M3 and BMW X5M will all run the new R888R tyres.
HRX
HRX are one of our new partners, supplying race seats, race suits and team wear for the team and the official Yamaha YXZ1000R race car upgrades. Their seats are custom made for us with specific detail on the arduous nature of competition and retaining full FIA homologation. Each YXZ1000R Race car comes complete with a pair of HRX team seats. HRX race suits are another godsend for us, previously we sturggled with suits that offered fire protection but could not withstand the mud, dirt and dust we race in, the HRX suit is not only lighweight and flexible but can take it all and still look like new after washing.
Bilstein Suspension
We’ve used suspension from nearly every manufacturer you can name and we keep coming back to Bilstein and this time we are here to stay. They’ve worked with us in developing the E46 and E92 Clubsport suspension and we run it on every car we own – road or track. A no quibble warranty, full support and a technical team based in the UK on hand for assistance and feedback is invaluable to us. Bilstein are the chosen control supplier for the Astra GTC Cup race cars.
Team Dynamics Wheels
Matt Neal and his team have been partners of ours for nearly 10 years, and try as we might to find a lighter, stronger wheel for our race cars we really cant, so every year we try and negotiate a better deal all the time knowing they have us over a barrell!. This year is slightly different, for the YXZ1000R race cars we have adopted Team Dynamics Pro Rally wheel rather than the Pro Race version. The Pro Rally is stronger and has build in disk protection so they will be able to withstand the rigours of competition in Wales, Scotland and the Dakar. We’ve moved to a 15″ size (up from the standard 14″) to allow us to use the new Toyo all terrain tyre and futher increase ground clearance. Each YXZ1000R comes with a full set of Pro Race wheels.
Owen Development
Continuing on from 2015 our turbo charger devlopment continues with Owen Developments. Our new Insignia VXR Garrett turbo is the latest development but more plans are on their way. Owen have jointly developed with us new turbo upgrades for the Corsa VXR, Astra H VXR and now the Insignia VXR as well as being the chosen partner for the GTC VXR model and Astra GTC Cup race cars. Current plans extend to the X5M and the new BMW M4.
Polstore
We have no real reason to list Polstore really, when we were in the BTCC they kindly supported us with new cabinets for our new workshop as well as rolling tool cabinets for the race team but that deal ended in 2013. They are here as 2 years on the workshop cabinets still look like new and the rolling cabs still roll despite being dropped off tail lifts, dragged round every track in the UK (and half of the Forestry Commission tracks) and even hit by a car and they still work like new – that deserves respect. if you want some new cabinets in your garage and like to park by touch there is no better choice.
Mobile Centre
Tim and his company Mobile Centre have supported us in parts and expertise for quite a few years but we dropped out of contact in the last year or so. A chance meeting at the 4×4 Show at Donington Park where he was exhibiting and we were launching the Wildcat at the BCCC stand and we got chatting about lighting. The issue with off road racing is that there are precious few facilities and it tends to be pitch black at night. Mobile Centres’ solution was astounding – 6 LED light fittings which give off enough light to land a plane by and all powered by 2 x 12v car batteries. We tried them out with an old battery from a 1M and an M3 that were replaced on customer cars as they were too low to run the BMW battery diagnostics (so they were due to be thrown away) and they ran all these lights, full power for 12 hours! Thanks Tim!
Vinyl Creations
Co-owner Rick will be surprised to see his company’s name here mainly as we’ve offered to have him as a partner for years and we’ve just never got round to it. Rick and his team have done our race and road car liveries for over 10 years and there is no-one else we will trust, we’ve tried others every now and then and they just aren’t as good, ever. Vinyl Creations did all the race cars wraps, the Tesco livery, the BTCC livery and all of our trucks (2 x artics, 3 x 7.5t and several vans) as well as all of our BMW TMS liveries, a fully wrapped Gallardo and supply all of our VXR-R livery packs and TMS stickers, all without issue and without compare as to quality. The fact we’ve stuck with them even though they have to drive up from Sittingborne in Kent every time we need them is testimony to their work.