You can ask questions over the ’phone, dredge the internet and read a tottering stack of press releases, but you will only get to the beating heart of a racecar manufacturer by visiting its factory in person. For while the physical foundations are buried deep beneath the floor, the philosophical underpinnings, what the company truly stands for and aspires to be, are displayed in the attitude of the people working there.
At Ginetta’s impressive base at Garforth, near Leeds, in the English county of Yorkshire, you almost immediately feel you’re among racers. There’s a real buzz about the place, a passion, a quiet urgency of business. Which is perhaps not surprising, for this is a motorsport company that’s actually headed and run by racers. Chief amongst these is hugely successful businessman and Le Mans class winner, Lawrence Tomlinson, who took over the company in 2005 and opened the impressive 75,000ft2 Garforth facility two years later. Since then, close to 1000 cars have rolled out of its gates.
There are about 80 people working at Garforth now (around 120 worldwide), although Tomlinson, now chairman, was not among them at the time of Racecar’s visit. His influence, though, is all-pervading.
‘He’s instrumental in every major decision here,’ says Mike Simpson, head of motorsport and former Ginetta LMP1 driver. ‘Lawrence has the vision, he’s very good at thinking ahead. In motorsport, people don’t think far enough ahead because you’re ducking and diving and things are so fluid and dynamic. But Lawrence has his eye three to five to seven years ahead, and it’s always his strategy.’
Development plan
Simpson was speaking in the reception area at the factory, in which sits one of the firm’s two G60-LT-P1 LMP1 cars, a project the company is immensely proud of. The car finished Le Mans at its first attempt in 2018, and Ginetta was aiming at a two-car assault in 2020, but what would have been its second
