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Which Motorsport Companies are Involved in Defence?

Which Motorsport Companies are Involved in Defence?

Motorsport is often described as a battleground, as drivers engage in combat on the track and engineers try to out-fox each other’s strategies. But the military comparison is far more than allegorical, as many racecar engineering firms have made big strides in the defence sector.
In part three of Beyond the Racecar, discover how the UK motorsport industry challenged and improved some of the British Army’s technologies.

At first glance, the motor racing and defence industries might not seem to have that much in common.

After all, the purpose of a racecar is to drive as fast as possible, over a given course, for as long as required, while the primary objective for military vehicles is to deliver tactical advantages on the battlefield that do not necessarily include speed.

Look a little deeper, though, and there are a number of disciplines in motorsport – most obviously an ability to innovate and problem solve at pace – that can have a positive effect on defence programmes.

Crossing the divide

The Foxhound patrol vehicle was automotive engineered by Ricardo under contract to General Dynamics UK, while Global Technologies Racing produced most of its composite protected crew pods (Crown Copyright)

As the CEO of B2B marketing agency, Chamois Consulting, Jamie Clarke has a number of client companies that have crossed the divide between motorsport and defence.

It was in the 2000s, however, while working in procurement in the British Army and then joining defence company, Supacat, that Clarke first witnessed how motorsport companies could make a positive contribution in the defence arena with their involvement in urgent operational requirements (UORs) for UK armed forces deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

‘Basically, the MoD [UK Ministry of Defence] had problems in Afghanistan with all sorts of kit because it was being used in ways it was never designed to be used,’ Clarke explains, noting that a particular issue arose with the introduction of the Jackal patrol vehicle in 2008.

‘Jackal had an extra nearly two tonnes of armour put onto it, and it was never designed to carry two tonnes of armour. If you then reduced your payload by two tonnes, that was okay, because you replace payload with armour, but obviously the guys weren’t doing that.

‘So they were running around in a seven-tonne truck at 11 tonnes with all their battlefield payload on and then wondering why the brakes were failing, and they were having to basically change the…

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