After months of speculation, Westwood finally decided to show the FV paddock what they will be bringing to the table in 2021. For some time now people have linked Westwood with just about every engine manufacturer other than Ford and Downton (both of whom are at capacity for customer teams). However today, Westwood confirmed what most had suspected; a two year extension of their engine supply from Porsche, ending in 2022.
But there is another twist to this tale, as Westwood also announced they'll be changing the name of the team due to increased backing from Porsche UK. Officially rebranded "Samsung Galaxy S Porsche UK Team Westwood Racing Technology", the team will be something of a semi-works team, receiving increased backing both financially and technically from Porsche UK and Porsche Centre London. Team Principal Lilly Westwood had this to say, before handing over to a couple of guest speakers. Lilly Westwood: "This is a huge opportunity for both ourselves at Westwood and the Porsche guys to be working even closer together. During our comeback season we were helped a lot by having a great engine in the car, and to be able to benefit from increased technical support while simultaneously able to improve our own technical feedback with more data gathering than before, is sure to help everyone involved. I've been way too excited sitting on this news for so long but we wanted to make sure we had everything correctly in place to execute it all according to plan! But thats enough from me, I'd like to introduce one of the big influences behind this move; Porsche UK Head of Marketing Duncan Bates!" DB: "Thankyou Lilly. We here at Porsche UK closely followed the progress of Westwood's return to Formula Virtual, and with Porsche exploding onto the scene with immediate success in the sport we felt it was a fantastic chance to enter into the pinnacle of Virtual Motorsport. Westwood are a team with a solid history and with big ambitions for the future, and we are excited to be taking this next step with them. We here at Porsche UK look forward to seeing what the next two years will bring!" LW: "Thanks for that Duncan, super excited to be working with you guys. And of course, it wouldn't be a Porsche related unveiling without some words from the Doc himself, please welcome Dr Heinrich Wallinger, Head of Virtual Motorsport, Porsche AG." Dr HW: “We’re delighted to see Porsche UK officially backing our Porsche Customer Racing team Westwood Racing Technology, and wholeheartedly see it as a vindication of the immediate success of Porsche in Formula Virtual. As well as continued support from the Porsche Customer Racing programme working alongside Coca-Cola Porsche Team Mathershaw, the dealer network backing from Porsche UK is sure to help Westwood move the team from strength to strength in 2021 after a great return to the sport in 2020.” Westwood appear to have gone for a more modern approach visually this year, taking similar colours from 2020 and putting them into a much more aggressive looking colour scheme. They also find themselves in the vein of teams who have taken experimental approaches to the rule changes. We see they have taken the same direction as Franklin on the front wing, incorporating a third element into their design. They've also innovated with the vents we've seen from the likes of North Star by introducing a duct on the nose, which is suspected to feed out of the vent just in front of the suspension unit. It is likely that this aids in reducing drag, and helps them to redirect airflow over the top of their car. Only time will tell what awaits this very modern machine, but here we have all the images from the launch, including a shot of the car in the studio, and a digital render of the car. Thankyou very much for reading, and we'll see you at testing in a few days time!
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