Bearings And Seals Support Racecar Success

Motorsport Team based in Oxford, UK, has supplied a range of bearing and sealing products for use in the development and campaigning of the Aston Martin DBR9 race cars in their first race season. Wyko worked closely with the designers and purchasing team on the parts required to develop and build the cars including among others; needle roller bearings, precision angular contact wheel bearings, suspension rod ends and Viton seals. Geoff Cox, Wyko Motorsport Business Unit manager comments, 'It has been exciting watching the Aston Martin DBR9 race cars and the components compete in the Le mans 24 hour and Sebring 12 hour endurance races, as well as the American ALMS and European FIA GT championships. The components we supplied were specified to a very high standard, taking into account not just endurance and performance, but weight, material compatibility and prior race experience.' Cox continues: 'The components in any race car perform under a tremendous amount of stress and there is a fine line to be trodden between performance and longevity, this is why rigorous testing is essential, Wyko has had to be flexible in terms of providing solutions and reacting to feedback in order to refine the product and material selection during development. Some products such as high precision miniature bearings and high strength Poly V belts are stock catalogue items, but others such as Viton rotary shaft seals have been specified individually for the car.' The DBR9 cars are campaigned by Aston Martin Racing, a new division of Aston Martin created specifically to race production-based sports cars in international championships around the world. The new division is a partnership with Prodrive, the company to which Wyko supplied the components. Prodrive is based in Banbury and is acknowledged as one of the world's leading motorsport and automotive technology specialists. The racing programme is focused on the new DBR9, which is based on the DB9 production car. Starting with 2005, Aston Martin Racing plans to build 12 individually numbered Works cars to be run by Works teams in the major international GT series.