JWA Racing

JWA Racing is a motorsports engineering company specialising in race teams, bespoke engineering, training and consultancy.

JWA is a dedicated motorsports company specialising in the provision of bespoke engineering services to the motorsports industry. The Company was set up by James Watt in 1998 who has an excellent pedigree and over 21 years experience in the industry working as a racing driver and then more latterly as part of the McLaren team. JWA prides itself on its ability to rapidly identify creative solutions

to engineering challenges and have immediate impact on racing performance. JWAs reputation has grown through its proven record to provide world class service and deliver high end results for its private clients.

28/04/2023

With the capability at JWA to supply parts to a wide variety of markets, we are always endeavouring to find new customers and opportunities. This often takes the form of attending ‘networking’ events, a good way of keeping our name at the forefront of potential clients minds, so that even if they don’t have an immediate need for our specialist skills, we will be the first call as and when they do!
Last week saw us attend two such events, both organised through our membership of the Motorsport industry Association, and therefore on this occasion concentrating on our traditional core markets of motorsport and niche automotive. The first was held at MOOG in Tewksbury, a market leading company in motion control sensors and systems. A tour of their factory was included alongside an open Industry forum, which is always useful to discuss a lot of the common challenges faced by similar companies and generally keep an ear to the ground and up to date with any industry developments. As with all these type of events, it is difficult to gauge which contacts may develop into potential business leads, and it is certainly the case that often the most innocuous conversations can lead to excellent opportunities! With a similar history in motorsport supply to JWA, MOOG’s state of the art facility contained numerous reminders of this, not least the 1999 Stewart-Ford F1 car pictured, driven that season by Johnny Herbert and Rubens Barrichello, with Herbert winning the European Grand Prix.
A freezing cold and wet Donington, venue for the latest round of the BTCC, provided slightly less comfortable conditions for the second networking event of the week, however the hospitality of the Toyota Gazoo Racing Team, more than made up for it. JWA are already fortunate enough to count current BTCC teams as customers, but welcomed the opportunity to expand that. Despite the weather, the relaxed atmosphere and unhindered access to all of the pit area and teams garages as they prepared for the weekends races, was a great opportunity to meet with the relevant team members and impress on them the unrivalled quality of JWA’s supply capabilities! Some very useful contacts were made and reinforced, which hopefully will also develop into new business.
All in all a busy but enjoyable week and with the NEC trade shows on the horizon, there is certainly no peace for the wicked! 😜

03/03/2023

There are certainly Historic race meetings, such as The Silverstone Classic, that attract more visitors, but as far as ‘static’ events go, the Mecca for Historic motorsport enthusiasts is undoubtedly Race Retro, held at Stoneleigh Park in Warwickshire. To refer to it as static is probably a touch unfair, as there is an impressive array of Group B rally cars that blast round a short layout on the Saturday and Sunday, however the main focus is the opportunity to meet face to face with the great and the good of the fastest growing form of motorsport, certainly in Europe, and exactly the reason representatives from JWA HQ set out for rural Warwickshire last Friday. The show is one of many that has endured a two year enforced postponement, and its return, while very welcome, was certainly on a more condensed scale. That said, and similarly to Autosport, its January held, modern racing counterpart, this could be seen as a positive, due to the fact that the reduction in size had been at the expense of some of the less relevant stands.
Luckily what was the same was the relaxed and friendly atmosphere that always pervades the show and as Historic motorsport undoubtedly has a 'lifestyle' appeal to its gatherings, the usual eclectic mix of owners clubs, food stalls, artwork, clothing stands and auto spares jumble were all happily familiar. Taking the opportunity to visit the MIA (Motorsport Industry Association) HQ, situated on the same Stoneleigh site, to meet fellow members and colleagues added to a very productive day which will hopefully lead to ongoing business opportunities and reinforce existing relationships. The only slight downside came when choosing, the admittedly very tasty lunch option of pork gyros and Greek salad, from an outlet that seemed to have set its pricing in line with the fact it was near the entrance to Silverstone Auctions, where the average depth of pocket saw a 35 year old performance, Ford Sierra, sell for an eye watering £582,000! 👀
Photos below are a Lotus 76 F1 car (Main Pic) from 1974, then left to right, a March 782, Corvette Stingray and a Ford RS 200 from the fantastic array of Group B Rally exhibition. If you've never attended, put it in your diary for 2024, some food pricing aside, it's a great event. 😄

13/01/2023

Well you know it's January, when you find yourself at the NEC for the Autosport International Show. This traditional opener to the motorsport calendar has been absent for the last couple of years, due to the obvious restraints of lockdown, and in the opinion of many regular visitors had seen a steadily diminishing attendance by some of the industries big hitters previous to this.
There was therefore a definite element of uncertainty in the JWA delegation that braved the miserable elements to attend the first of the 'trade' days on Thursday this week, not really knowing what to expect from an event that had once been a very glitzy affair indeed.
What greeted them was certainly a downsized version of its previous incarnation, no sleek Porsche stand dominating the main entrance, with all the 'beautiful people' flocking to it, and equally noticeable, a distinct lack of spearmint rhino employees moonlighting for a few days in expertly tailored cat suits on any manufacturers stand worth its salt!
That said, what it did have was probably more important, a good core of current and potential customers, situated in a footprint that didn't require a sat nav to get around, ensuring we achieved a good deal of the actual purpose of our attendance, meeting and greeting like minded individuals who already do, and potentially could, allow JWA to enjoy further growth in one of the most fascinating and successful UK industries. Sure there was even more driving simulators, multiple vehicles that had been gaudily modified to the point where you can't actually tell what it started out as! and the usual assortment of eye wateringly priced 'refreshments' where every care is taken to ensure that you don' at any point have an interaction with another human being! But this is just standard at all modern trade shows and from the amount of people flocking around the elements that aren't really 'our cup of tea', it's obviously theirs, and good luck to them. Maybe a scaled down show was what was needed at this exact moment in time, as businesses kept a close eye on their marketing budgets and reigned in the 'look at us' gimmicks, concentrating more on good old fashioned networking to ensure survival and growth? We certainly took enough away to reinforce our belief that 2023 could be a very exciting year for JWA, but for next years show, maybe one or two more cat suits wouldn't hurt anyone! 😉

16/12/2022

It's always nice to receive positive feedback from customers, and this week at JWA HQ, we were lucky enough to receive just that from the latest recipients of our bespoke, pneumatic car lifts.
A race team who compete a number of different cars in various championships, they contacted us at the beginning of last week with a requirement for a set of lifts, ideally in time for initial use with their single seater, at a test that weekend!
Needless to say, challenge accepted, and before 9.30 a.m. last Thursday morning a set duly arrived at their workshop in Essex. Hand delivered by a JWA employee to ensure safe transit, and immediately put to work, the lifts have proved an instant success.
Many thanks to Paul, the happy customer, for his kind feedback regarding the speed of delivery, the quality of the lifts and the picture below of them in action, we hope his team find them as invaluable as we do our own set. 👍

02/12/2022

An opportunity to restore a legend..
There was a growing sense of anticipation at JWA HQ this week, as we received the green light to initiate the re-build of an irrefutable classic. The E-Type Jaguar, is in many peoples eyes, the most iconic British sports car ever produced, instantly recognisable to even the most casual of observers, and therefore being entrusted with restoring one to its previous glory, is testament to the capabilities we are proud to retain at JWA. The fact that this particular 'Big Cat' is one of the sought after Series 1, drop head, flat floor examples, only amplifies the pride and expectation in hearing its signature purr again.
Over the next few months we will be bringing you regular updates of its progress, but for now there's some serious homework to be done!

10/11/2022

Seeing the first job for a new customer, completed to specification and departing the workshop in the required timescale, is always very rewarding. In this case the latest such batch from JWA HQ is 40 sets of bespoke door hinges for a new motorsport client, and hopefully just the first of many projects we can assist with.

19/10/2022

Many congratulations from everyone at JWA HQ, to our customers EXCELR8 Motorsport, their winning driver, Tom Ingram, and our friend and Chief Race Engineer, Spencer Aldridge, on their first BTCC championship victory, a fantastic team effort! A notoriously difficult title to win, in arguably the most competitive series in UK Motorsport, we are proud to have been trusted with providing engineering support throughout the season. Here's to a repeat next year! 😄🏆 (All photos courtesy of EXCELR8 Motorsport)

23/09/2022

We may be a little biased, but thought we would share this fantastic example of metallic artistry, and the latest part produced by the very talented team at JWA HQ. As with so many of the bespoke and reverse engineered parts our customers entrust to us, they are brought to life through the combined skills of our design and machining personnel. The pictured part, a wheel from a late 2000's LMP1 (A category of the historic Le Mans 24 hour race) sports prototype, is no exception. Machined from a solid billet of aluminium on our DMG Mori 5 axis machining center, the various stages of production are carried out by its muti-tool capability, once the programme has been converted from a drawing to the appropriate software. The final product therefore relies on the cooperation and input of numerous members of staff, and I'm sure you'll agree, it is a very effective combination!

02/09/2022

As most agile companies do, we are always keen to expand our customer base and spread the gospel according to JWA!
Obviously one of the best opportunities to do this is at major motorsport events and last week saw two just such gatherings take place. Unfortunately both were scheduled in the motorsport diary for the same Friday, but ever the resourceful types, the JWA representative squad decided to divide and conquer, splitting their forces in half to attend both.
One group was dispatched to the home of British motorsport for the Silverstone Classic, somewhat of a mecca for a large number of our traditional clientele and arguably the biggest event in the UK Historic Motorsport scene. With nearly all grids containing cars relying on a part manufactured at JWA HQ, it is the ideal surrounding to catch up with long standing customers while hopefully meeting some new in the relaxed atmosphere of the ‘open’ pits.
In contrast our involvement in The British Touring Car Championship is relatively new, however proving our quality and responsive engineering support to a major team and tier one supplier, has enabled us to establish a burgeoning reputation relatively quickly. A Motorsport Industry Association event at the Thruxton round of the Championship was therefore not to be missed, and as such the second JWA operative was up bright and early for the three hour journey to a very sunny Hampshire. The MIA delegation were guests of BTC Racing in their fantastic hospitality trailer (Main picture) and after coffee and a few amusing anecdotes from one of their current drivers and ex BTCC Champion, Jason Plato, a very productive tour of their garage and the general pit area followed. Managing to speak to one of our existing clients and a number of other teams made for a very effective day of networking, which even the two hour tailback on the M5 leg of the journey home didn’t manage to ruin! Hopefully both visits will bear fruit in the coming months. 😉

19/08/2022

Another incarnation of our pneumatic lifts left the JWA workshop this week. On this occasion the adaption was required to accommodate the oversized front aero on a clients car, while still allowing it to be raised safely to working height. In true JWA style, with the customer under pressure to source a solution, from the initial enquiry on Monday morning, the lift was designed, manufactured and tested, in time for a very impressed client to collect on Friday morning, a pretty quick turnaround even by our standards! 😉

05/08/2022

Two fantastic celebrations of Historic Racing, taking place within two weeks of each other, can only mean one thing..................the production schedule at JWA HQ has gone into overdrive!
Both the AvB Oldtimer at the Nurburgring next weekend, and the Silverstone Classic at the end of August, are always popular, well supported events. Enticing large crowds with a potent cocktail of nostalgic racing and live music, they are part Grand Prix, part Glastonbury, with the grids containing something for everyone, from pre-war and the era of Stirling Moss, through Group C and Classic F1, to 90's Touring cars and everything in between!
With JWA's long standing reputation of success both competing in and supplying Historic motorsport, and a large proportion of our racing clientele entering or preparing cars for both events, our talented team are flat out ensuring a host of beautiful classics make it to the starting grid. As always, it is very rewarding to be involved in ensuring current generations get to see these machines as they should be, not just on static display, but dicing with each other around two of Europe's most iconic circuits, long may it continue. 😁

29/07/2022

Well the old saying that 'a picture tells a thousand words' is certainly true for some of the latest parts dispatched to customers from JWA HQ. Regular followers will be aware of the pride we take in the broad diversity of solutions we can offer customers, whether that be method, material or complexity, our can do approach usually finds a way!
From large, fabricated assemblies down to small, intricate components such as those in the image below, our talented team are capable of ensuring clients projects are completed to a consistently high standard, whichever end of the scale they require. 😀👍

Address

Stafford
ST216JL

Website

http://www.jwaracing.com/

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