Prodrive

For other uses see Prodrive (disambiguation)

Prodrive

Type	Private
Founded	1984
Headquarters	Banbury, England, United Kingdom
Key people	David Richards (founder) Ian Parry (founder)
Industry	Motorsport Automotive engineering
Subsidiaries	Prodrive USA Prodrive Thailand Prodrive Germany ProdriveAustralia Prodrive China
Website	Prodrive.com

Prodrive Ltd. is a motorsport and automotive engineering group based in Banbury, Oxfordshire, England. It designs, constructs and races cars for companies and teams such as Subaru and Aston Martin. Its Automotive Technology division based in Warwick provides road car design and engineering consultation for various car manufacturers.

Prodrive is perhaps best known for its involvement in the World Rally Championship with the Subaru World Rally Team.

In addition to its British base, the group has activities in Germany, Detroit and California in the United States, Thailand, China and Australia. Turnover in 2005 was £112 million.

History

Prodrive was founded in 1984 by Ian Parry and David Richards, who is now the chairman of the group. Their first involvement in motor racing was running rally teams for Porsche, MG and BMW, all of whom it had various successes with. In 1987 they expanded into touring cars, running BMW's M3, in the British Touring Car Championship. They were the outright 1988 champions, and class champions in 1989 and 1990. Since then, Prodrive has been almost continuously involved in touring cars, running campaigns for Alfa Romeo, Honda and Ford.

In 1999, investment group Apax Partners bought 49% of the company.

In 2001, Prodrive entered sports car racing with its own privately-developed Ferrari 550 GTS Maranello, which competed in the FIA GT series and the GTS class of the American Le Mans Series. In 2003, the Prodrive team beat the rival Chevrolet Corvette C5R at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race to take the GTS class win.

In May 2001, Prodrive acquired Tickford, a British automotive engineering business based in Milton Keynes. With this business came joint venture operations with Engelhard in Detroit and Ford of Australia in Melbourne Australia.

In 2003 Prodrive bought Glenn Seton Racing and renamed it as Ford Performance Racing for the 2003 Australian V8 Supercar Championship. Prodrive also owned 51% in Ford Performance Vehicles (Ford Australia holds the other 49%).

In December 2001 Prodrive was brought in to manage the unsuccessful Formula One constructor BAR. Richards was appointed as team principal of BAR, but after Honda increased its share in the team in late 2004, Richards was replaced in that role by Prodrive's managing director Nick Fry.

Following its success with the Ferrari 550, Aston Martin and Prodrive created a partnership called Aston Martin Racing. In 2004, Aston Martin Racing unveiled the DBR9 based on the road going DB9. In its first outing at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 2005, the team won the GT1 class. The team competed with the cars at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2005 and came third to the factory Corvette team and then during 2006 competed in the American Le Mans Series. At Le Mans in 2006, the Aston Martin Racing team was second to the Corvettes, but in the same event in 2007 the Aston Martin Racing team won.

In January 2006 Prodrive unveiled a two-seater sports car Prodrive P2.

In March 2007 a consortium led by Prodrive chairman David Richards bought British sports car firm Aston Martin from Ford, bringing Aston Martin back into British control. Prodrive has no financial involvement in the deal.^[1]

World Rally Championship

In 1990, Prodrive began a long standing and highly successful relationship with Subaru, forming the Subaru World Rally Team. Prodrive was tasked with running Subaru's rallying campaigns, helping them to three Drivers' and three Manufacturers' World Rally Championships. Starting out with the Subaru Legacy, they achieved minor success in the World Rally Championship with regular drivers Colin McRae and Ari Vatanen. The first Subaru victory in the WRC was by McRae in a Legacy during the 1993 Rally New Zealand. The smaller and more agile Impreza became the platform which Prodrive would be most successful with in rally. Scotland’s Colin McRae won the 1995 World Rally Championship for drivers, followed later by England’s Richard Burns in 2001 and Norwegian Petter Solberg in 2003. All three championship Subarus were prepared and run by Prodrive.

The distinctive blue with yellow colour scheme is a throwback to the early 1990s sponsorship deal with 555, a BAT cigarette brand popular in Asia. The Impreza/Prodrive partnership continues to be a major force in World Rallying.

Formula One

Main article: Prodrive F1

On 28 April 2006, Prodrive were officially granted entry to F1 when the FIA announced the list of entrants to the 2008 Formula One World Championship.^[2]

FIA president Max Mosley was impressed by Prodrive's bid, which beat off stiff competition from the likes of Carlin Motorsport, the Jean Alesi-led McLaren-supported Direxiv outfit, BAR co-founder Craig Pollock, former Minardi owner Paul Stoddart and ex-Jordan Grand Prix team principal, Eddie Jordan.

He revealed that Prodrive have found the finances to support their bid, adding: "Prodrive has the best combination of financial backing, technical capability and motorsport experience. Also, Prodrive's chief executive, David Richards, has experience as a Formula One team principal".

The Fulcrum

Prodrive already had a facility at the former RAF Honiley airfield and LucasVarity proving ground near Wroxall, Warwickshire, together with Marcos and TRW.^[3]

In March 2006, Prodrive announced its intent to build a £200million, acre ( km²) motorsport facility called The Fulcrum.^[4]^[5] Prodrive's statement in the planning application for the facility – which could house as many as 1,000 staff – boasted of "a motorsport complex which could eventually house Prodrive's new British Prodrive F1 team", further cementing Managing Director Richards' intention to return to F1 in 2008. Until the Honiley factory is operational, Prodrive will remain at their existing Banbury headquarters.

As of 3 August 2006, Prodrive has won the support of the Warwick District Council planning committee for development of The Fulcrum.^[6] The permission covers a highly advanced engineering research and development campus, a conference facility called the Catalyst Centre and new access road, a roundabout, infrastructure, parking and landscaping. The plans still have to be presented and agreed by the British government's Department for Communities and Local Government, and there is local opposition via the Fulcrum Prodrive Action Group (FPAG) to protect the rural nature of the community and the safety of the people that live within it.^[3]