Ginetta on a roll

I’ve been writing an article on Ginetta, the famous British race car brand. It’s launching a new model at the Autosport International Show at the NEC in January. The G40 will replace the G20 coupé (above) in the Ginetta Junior Championship, but the big news is it’s been homologated for the road. Ginetta boss Lawrence Tomlinson claims that makes it the UK’s only race car you can drive to the circuit in, compete, and then – assuming no Armco interaction – use to head home. Ginetta was a firm I knew very little about but the more I learned the more I was impressed. From being insolvent not long ago it’s now profitable, based in a state-of-the-art engineering facility in Leeds, selling cars into three one-make series, competing in the European GT4 Championship and taking on the big boys like Peugeot and Audi in the Le Mans Series and at the famous 24 Hour Race. Not surprisingly, Tomlinson was shortlisted for an Outstanding Contribution to Motorsport honour earlier this year. He only lost out to some F1 chap called Brawn who also had quite a good 2009.