Amesbury, 8/8/2018 Following on from nearly four years of successful technical co-operation, the Downton High Performance Engines division and DS Performance, along with their factory FV teams Downton FV Team and DS Automobiles Team Mathershaw, have announced that their current collaboration will end following the conclusion of the 2018 Formula Virtual season in Brazil, with a new, looser deal to begin next year. Both parties will continue their partnership including common gearbox and drivetrain, but with each producing their own engines based on a common architecture to allow greater technical freedom. In addition, each brand will supply one team on the FV grid – Downton will continue their supply to Lopez, while the new DS Automobiles-branded power unit will be supplied to Phoenix Motorsport, who will also become an official DS Performance backed team.
On the deal, Downton team principal Bradley Downton commented: “It’s going to be interesting going forwards. Ourselves and DS Mathershaw have worked so closely for a number of years now, and that won’t be changing one bit. The only difference here is that us and Lopez are now going to have an engine built by our guys with support from our own team of DS Automobiles engineers, while another team will build the engines for DS Mathershaw and the newly rebranded DS Phoenix. Everything else will stay the same, apart from the fact that we now have one more team in the stable, and I’m delighted to welcome Phoenix to our family. The team have done a truly incredible job in their opening season, and we look forwards to working with them moving forwards.” When pushed for what prompted the change, Downton replied: “Two main factors really. We’d been having discussions with Alex for a number of months about a supply of DS Downton engines in 2019, but then the regulations changed from what had been written and we could only have three teams with the same engine, which slightly messed with our plans. Following this, myself, Declan (Johnson), Arthur and Robert sat down and spoke about the engine situation. While we have no intention of splitting up this partnership, we felt a little variety in terms of engines couldn’t hurt now that we were seemingly fighting each other for titles.” Meanwhile, DS Mathershaw team principal Arthur Lapierre was excited by the change: “While the DS-Downton partnership has been extraordinarily successful, we have to constantly look for ways to change for the better. With both of us in the hunt for championship titles, it makes sense that we begin to pursue avenues of benefit to both of us. In addition, the change has allowed us to welcome Phoenix Motorsport to the fold, and we are excited that they will become an official DS Performance team from 2019 – there are a number of exciting announcements regarding this yet to come over the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye on your newsfeeds. Robert Mathershaw discussed the technical merits of the move: “As of late, both ourselves and Downton have found that we have wanted to take slightly different development paths with the engine – in particular its power delivery – to take full advantage of each team’s chassis characteristics. As a result, this change allows both of us the freedom we need, while maintaining the technical partnership that has been so successful for both parties. The use of common architecture means both brands can share data to ensure overall reliability and performance remains as strong as ever, while also ensuring costs are reduced in the production of common components. In addition, the continued commonality of gearbox and drivetrain components ensures continued reliability and quality benefitting from the wealth of experience held by both Downton and DS Performance engineers.” Both 2019 customer teams were approached for comment: Alex Easton, Team Principal of Phoenix Motorsport: “Everyone at Phoenix is absolutely ecstatic with the agreement. To be honest, we didn’t think the deal would be done for a while yet, as there were quite a few niggles to sort out, but credit to everyone at DS Automobiles, they’ve motored on with things and the cogs have really got going quickly over the last few weeks and days. To say we’re looking forward to beginning our relationship is an understatement, to be associated with such a big team like DS Mathershaw will be enormous for us. Our first season in Formula Virtual has gone splendidly so far and, with the support of DS Automobiles and Downton, everyone at Phoenix is incredibly excited to see what the coming years have in store for all involved in this deal.” Dylan Lopez, Team Principal of Lopez FV Team was unavailable due to his well-documented World Tour, but was reported to be pleased with the news. Comments are closed.
|
|