HOW MOTORSPORT HAS COPED IN LOCKDOWN
A look at how teams are bouncing back after the enforced hiatus,
There’s far more to motorsport than what happens out on track or on the special stages. From the series officials and stewards to the marshals and the scrutineers, a whole army of people do their bit week-in-weekout to ensure the race or rally goes ahead. But even before anyone gets to the circuit or the service park, there’s an entire other industry working flat out in the background that’s just as vital to motorsport going ahead.
Clearly, Lewis Hamilton can’t go racing in Formula 1 without his Mercedes team. Ott Tanak can’t defend his World Rally Championship crown without Hyundai preparing and servicing his i20 Coupe WRC. And equally, the clubman racer can’t compete without some sort of help from a third party whether it be a team running their car on race day, looking after their car in between events or simply providing it with a new part. Without the industry behind it, motorsport wouldn’t exist.
But sadly Covid-19 has been a real spanner in the works for the UK motorsport industry; particularly the smaller, independent firms. While a large portion of the UK population has been fortunate enough to work from home or take advantage of the government’s furlough scheme, this hasn’t been an option for a lot of those earning a living from motorsport. Lockdown has forced a lot of one-manbands to reassess operations and, of course, some firms are more insulated from the problem than others.
For example Boreham Motorsport – which specialises in Mazda MX-5S – has managed to weather the storm relatively well all things considered. While boss Ray Worley admits he has found lockdown tedious, he tells Motorsport News that not been a crisis because of the nature of his particular business.
Worley explains: “The day before the lockdown we were supposed to be testing then the lockdown happened and so that was that. So I had really nothing to do on any of the cars. Had we have actually done that test I might have had some development work to do, but it meant that we had absolutely nothing to do at all. [But] we’re a family-run business and my workshop is actually at home so from that point of view we don’t have enormous overheads like some of my friends at Elite Motorsport and places like that.”
As Worley mentions, not everyone has had such an easy time of it. Kevin Mills of Formula Ford 1600 team Kevin Mills Racing describes the lockdown as a “disaster” as he hasn’t been able to earn any money at all since March.
“I just hire cars out to go racing, so when we’re not going we’re not earning, it’s as simple as that,” Mills tells MN. “I was lucky that over the winter I’d been building a Swift SC92 Formula Ford car [and] was able to sell that to Nathan Ward, who’s racing it at Castle Combe, and have a little bit of money to live off really; otherwise we were in trouble.
“I did all the basic things that everyone did I think, deferred your mortgages and all that stuff to cut your monthly costs right down just to get by. I didn’t quite qualify for any of the grants or anything from the government because my business address is still at my home address, so that stops me doing all that.”
Andy Low, who has recently acquired Low Dempsey Racing, has perhaps had the roughest ride of all having only just invested in buying the race team from Cliff Dempsey before the crisis hit. Low says: “Obviously with the financial outlay of buying the business to be hit with what we were straight away was hard to take but we’re really lucky with the drivers and their sponsors and everyone who’s paying the bills; they looked after us throughout which you cannot grumble about. Every driver who signs for a team generally puts a deposit down and that deposit really looked after us through the three months.
“We couldn’t spend a penny on anything,” he adds. “I had to take all the mortgage holidays and all that sort of thing myself to make sure we had all the overheads to a minimum. [But] obviously you’ve got the workshop
[to still pay for], that’s the biggest one, all the insurances [and] you’ve still obviously got to pay yourself some form of a wage to pay the bills at home.”
The situation doesn’t look much rosier for rallying firms either; in fact it arguably looks bleaker. While rallying is now able to resume alongside circuit racing which restarted at the beginning of the month, the rallying calendar is looking rather empty. So although businesses can now get back to work, they face a new battle of survival to try to find additional avenues of revenue. It’s not an insurmountable issue though, as rally teams are nothing if not resourceful.
Wayne Sisson, who runs Mitsubishi Evo specialist Arnside Motorsport (AMS), explains to MN: “Naturally things are quieter yes. As there have been no rallies since mid-march so this has had a big impact on our workload, we reduced our staff levels for safety as soon as the outbreak was announced. However we have kept reasonably busy.
“We do 90 % of the services we offer in-house so our diaries were already full with engine builds, transmission rebuilds etc along with some ongoing car builds so it’s given us a bit of time to catch up on these. Our global parts sales have also kept us busy with many teams across the world using this downtime to carry out any necessary rebuilds and upgrades.”
But Sisson admits he is worried about the winter months, which is usually the busiest period for a preparation firm as customers get their cars rebuilt ready for a new season. However with a severe lack of rallies in 2020, this isn’t going to be necessary for a lot of drivers.
Elsewhere, Dom and Neil Buckley at
There really does seem to be light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. Of course the looming threat of a second spike of cases continues, but it does appear that we are through the worst of it as the country’s various industries ease back to capacity. Motorsport is no different. Racing resumed on July 4 and rallying will swiftly follow with rally time trials taking place next month and the first stage event likely to be held in September. This isn’t just brilliant news for competitors and fans, it’s like Christmas to the UK’S preparation firms and workshops.
Mercifully, while there have naturally been hurdles and complications, the motorsport industry looks to have emerged from these turbulent times as unscathed as it could.
And that’s crucial, because if you actually stop and think about the potential domino effect the loss of teams and preparations firms could’ve had, it’s frightening. For motorsport to function smoothly and as we know it, we need so much of the ecosystem to be in place and each cog in the wheel is as important as the other.
Countless companies have been forced to be more frugal than ever over the last few months just to ensure survival. The unknown now is how much money competitors are willing to spend on motorsport in what is now a damaged economy? A lot of them are self-employed themselves and will have made sacrifices during lockdown, while others who own companies will struggle to justify spending on motorsport when they have may have to make job cuts. That’s a definite image problem, and all of that will negatively impact the motorsport industry.
Firms will be aware of that however, and some are even chasing new business ventures in a bid to boost income. Ray Worley at Boreham Motorsport’s venture into CCTV and security typifies this, and demonstrates just what an intelligent and resourceful bunch motorsport people are.
They’ll need all their experience and know-how to keep weathering the storm but so long as there’s racing cars on track and rally cars on stages, competitors will always need bits, parts and cars built and rebuilt or mechanics on the ground at events. Let’s hope that one day, 2020 will be nothing more than an awkward chapter in the history of the country’s thriving motorsport industry.