Rob Aiken, Director of Ford’s Formula Virtual engine program:
“Ford Motor Company is pleased to announce that it will remain in Formula Virtual for 2019 and beyond, and will supply two teams: FIRST Motorsport and Arnello Milner & Ronson Autosport [AMR]. I would like to formally welcome AMR into the Ford FV engine partnership for 2019. It will be a big boost to our operations to have a second team to gather data on our engines and provide valuable feedback. Given AMR’s experience designing, building, and testing their own engines, I am sure that AMR can provide a unique perspective that will significantly improve our performance on the track. Ford is planning on offering jobs to several of the engineers from AMR’s closing engine program because of their relevant experience as well as their ability to facilitate better communications between Ford and AMR. I believe that our engine program has a lot of potential as demonstrated by our results in the 2017 FV season and I believe that we can return to 2017 levels of performance or better in both 2019 and 2020. And adding a second team in AMR will only strengthen our operation.” AMR and FIRST also released statements on the announcement: Adrian Arnello, AMR Team Principal: "We're really excited to get this show on the road for next year. We had these amazing plans to continue manufacture of the original AMR units, offer them to others, move up as a proper independent, integrated team. Sadly, we're simply not in a position to do this any longer. What money we have left has to go to giving our drivers a proper racing chance sooner, and keep our little tribe together for longer. Hence, Jan, Brad, and I got together with the management team and basically just laid it down. We said look, we're not going to make this work unless we stagnate the team to the point where we'd be at the back for years. And no-one wants that. So we decided to reach out to a few different engine manufacturers, and we eventually struck a deal Adam at FIRST to get Ford motors into the car to let us race hard once more. Ford have a rich pedigree at all levels of motorsport, and we're privileged to be a new part of that history. To top it off, it's a great little unit with more capability than we have now. Again, there's a bittersweet feeling here, just like we had with Felix deciding to move on from the team. In one instance we're losing an amazing driver, but on the other hand, he's getting the opportunity to race for bigger and better teams. Here, we're losing this wonderful opportunity to put our in-house motor to great use, but at the same time, we're back to focusing on race weekends rather than decades ahead. We are a racing team first and foremost, and I think that got lost for a while when AMR (the original AMR) came on board to do their work. We're excited to be getting that vision back together after such a fragmented last two years." Adam Blocker, FIRST Motorsport Team Principal: “Ford have been one of FIRST’s best partners since the founding of our team. I am pleased to renew our deal with Ford and I thank them for all the contributions that they have made to our race team so far. It was really a no-brainer to continue our partnership. I am excited for AMR to join our partnership with Ford. I have a lot of respect for the guys over at AMR for what they have achieved as an independent team and I believe that they will be very valuable partners going forward. I cannot wait for 2019!” Comments are closed.
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