2017 kicked off with the usual visit to the annual Autosport International Show at the Birmingham NEC. The show features cars from every discipline of motorsport and a healthy amount of supercars alongside them.
We walked into the show to be greeted by Wayne Keeber’s Soarer on the Landsail Tyres stand, the new wrap looks great with the details highlighting the technology in tyre development.
On the other side of the Landsail Tyres stand sat Marcin Mucha’s S2000, its also sporting the same livery but the question on our minds was who would be driving the car this year?
A quick look around the show before it opened to the public meant that we could photograph most of the cars without anyone in the shot. Darren McNamara’s Audi has finally been shown to the public, this car will be great to see on track when it makes its debut, complete with Group B styling. We spoke to D-mac to find out some details and it’s going to be an impressive car with the correct sound from the Group B days echoing around the track.
James Deane’s S14 was being displayed alongside the Samsonas Transmissions stand, it looked great after a quick refresh in the off season but it’s not the car everyone wanted to see.
The Sunoco stand had a car hidden from view as the show opened with many people trying to get a look under the camo netting to see what it was. It was unveiled as Steven ‘Baggsy’ Biagioni’s new PS13. It’s been in development for a while but it was finally released to a great reception from the shows visitors.
Westlake Tyres had Christy Carpenters new GT86 on display, this car is still in the early stages of the build but looked impressive anyway. We look forward to seeing the finished car on track soon.
Venturing further through the show we stumbled across multiple BTCC, GT and historic F1 cars.
At the far end of the halls we found Ryan Coopers R33 Skyline with its new livery, we will be bringing you a better look at this car soon.
In this hall we also found the Fueltopia Barrel Sprint / Formula G stand featuring Adam Elder’s freshly wrapped S14. This car has seen many great result across Europe and with some new sponsors announced after the show we can’t wait to see whats in store for 2017.
This stand also featured Dmitrij Sribnyj’s Imprezza, Jake Archer’s Imprezza, Sean Franklin’s Puma, James Gilbert’s E36 and Mark Young’s S13.
The live action arena featured 50 years of Rallycross with Liam Doran doing his best to make up for the fact that it didn’t feature any drifting this year.
The Autograss cars are always a popular attraction in the live action arena with plenty of sideways moments and wheelies away from the corners.
Away from all of that there was a huge amount of engineering stands to look through, clothing and safety suppliers…
We will leave you with some more photos from the show, until next time……