Neil Brown and Roush Yates celebrate engine awards
Neil Brown Engineering and Roush Yates Engine have received Race Tech awards for the engine tuners motorsport successes in the 2016 season.
The Race Engine Designer of the Year Award went to Neil Brown Engineering for its championship-winning powertrain in the Team Dynamics BTCC Honda Type-R.
“First I’d like to thank Neil Brown Engineering for all of their hard work with us and on winning the BTCC championship this year,” said Team Dynamics technical director, Barry Plowman.
The project, conducted by Neil Brown Engineering, was technically challenging, not least because it involved dissipating the extra heat created in the cylinder head and passed into the water system of the four-cylinder, 16-valve engine.
“It is a great honour to receive the Race Tech Engine Designer of the year award and I’d like to thank Race Tech very much for this,” added Plowman. “If you want to know more about the engine, then pick up Race Tech magazine and read all about it in there!”
A Special Achievement accolade was also presented in this category to Ford Performance and Roush Yates for the 2016 Le Mans win.
“Thank you to Race Tech for this honour, I feel very humble to accept this award tonight on behalf of Roush Yates Engines and our partner Ford Performance,” said Wade Riesterer, technical manager for road racing at Roush Yates Engines. “We had a very global team working on this programme with Multimatic Engineering in Canada and the UK, Chip Ganassi Racing at Indianapolis in the US, us at Roush Yates in North Carolina (US) and of course Ford at Dearborn (US).”
Ford made a bold statement when it announced that it had developed a V6 engine for endurance racing, which went on to win the most important race of the year, the 24 Hours of Le Mans – celebrating the Blue Oval’s 50th anniversary victory in the process.
“A significant amount of work went into this programme in our inaugural year at Le Mans where we won and had all four cars finishing in the top ten,” Riesterer said. “I can’t say enough about the work that the whole team has done. Again I thank Race Tech very much for the award and recognising our achievement.”