Prodrive Open Day
Last Saturday we attended the Prodrive open day. For those of you who don't know, Prodrive are a motorsport company run by David Richards. They are currently responsible for the Subaru World Rally Team, as well as the Le Mans winning Aston Martin racing team.
Their factory is also conveniently located just down the road in Banbury!
Lucas certainly enjoyed looking at all the race cars! These are Aston Martins BTW.
Pictures of the winning cars (with the Le Mans trophy on roof), and one of the winning drivers, David Brabham, son of Australian legend Sir Jack Brabham.
The factory tour was great, including a display of how to assemble a Subaru WRC car.
First you start off with the roll-cage and body panels. Then you install the heat shielding and all the wiring loom (1.2 km's worth!).
Then you install all the electronic control units and driver systems. WRC cars are amongst the most sophisticated cars in the world, with such fancy gizmos as electronically controlled torque transfer and active yaw control.
Then you assemble the suspension and drop in the engine. Note the amount of electronics in the engine bay!
The finished article!
We were then treated to a demonstration of a WRC-service 'pitstop'. In just under 7 minutes, they managed to change all 4 wheels, the gearbox, the intercooler.. and god knows what else.
Subaru driver Chris Atkinson (another Aussie) was on hand during the day as well.
You can read what a success the Open Day was here!
Autosport link
Their factory is also conveniently located just down the road in Banbury!
Lucas certainly enjoyed looking at all the race cars! These are Aston Martins BTW.
Pictures of the winning cars (with the Le Mans trophy on roof), and one of the winning drivers, David Brabham, son of Australian legend Sir Jack Brabham.
The factory tour was great, including a display of how to assemble a Subaru WRC car.
First you start off with the roll-cage and body panels. Then you install the heat shielding and all the wiring loom (1.2 km's worth!).
Then you install all the electronic control units and driver systems. WRC cars are amongst the most sophisticated cars in the world, with such fancy gizmos as electronically controlled torque transfer and active yaw control.
Then you assemble the suspension and drop in the engine. Note the amount of electronics in the engine bay!
The finished article!
We were then treated to a demonstration of a WRC-service 'pitstop'. In just under 7 minutes, they managed to change all 4 wheels, the gearbox, the intercooler.. and god knows what else.
Subaru driver Chris Atkinson (another Aussie) was on hand during the day as well.
You can read what a success the Open Day was here!
Autosport link
posted by PG at 11:58 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home