2nd February 2012 Winter Works With winter whizzing by, the new season will be upon us before we know it and there has been plenty going on at Pilbeam Racing Designs to keep us busy (and warm!). There have been more developments on the Lotus Elise for the Australian Targa Tarmac Rally Series; full details and photos to follow soon. This project has produced some fabulous new upgrades which will soon be available to buy through our Performance Parts shop at www.eliseperformanceparts.com. In addition to the Lotus upgrades that we already manufacture, we are working on many new performance parts for other road and track favourites too. New online shop launching soon. The MP98 "Virage" Sports Racer has been chosen for an interesting track series in South Africa and two examples are being built with Duratech powerplants. 1st February 2012 Famous Pilbeam for sale The rock legend that is AC/DC frontman (and historic racing enthusiast), Brian Johnson, has decided to sell the Pilbeam MP84 that he has owned for several years. Chassis 04 was built in late 2000 and its début race was at Daytona in 2001, where it became the first Pilbeam to race at the prestigious Rolex 24 Hours, seen here on the famous banking during qualifying. "04" then went on to race in both the American Le Mans and the Grand Am Road Racing Series, scoring 3 class podium finishes over the following 2 seasons. To find out more about this car, go to the John Starkey Cars website. 8th November 2011 MP98 Virage CN sports car The MP98 run by Zele Racing in Austria and Germany has been showing some excellent form in recent weeks. The last race at the Hockenheim GP circuit saw the MP98 fastest of the 2.0 litre CN cars among a good competitive field, adding to previous wins in the Interserie Championship. Latest plans include running a new MP98 in the speed Series for 2012 with a strong UK based team. 2nd November 2011 Professional Motorsport World Expo Cologne, November 12-16 Mike Pilbeam has been invited to present a workshop (2.30 Weds 16 Nov) in conjunction with Danny Nowlan of ChassisSim. There will be two main topics: to show how simulation can be used to enhance the track performance of your race car and to describe how simulation has been used to improve the design of a new race car whilst taking much of the guesswork out of that hard initial phase. Visit Pilbeam and ChassisSim at stand 2055 throughout the show! 2nd November 2011 New Pilbeam development of the Lotus Elise A new Elise has been built by Pilbeam Racing to compete in the Australian Targa rally series. This is a completely new project and includes many new components in both the suspension and bodywork areas to take the performance to a new level. More details and photos in our Lotus section soon! Many of the components developed for this project are already available to enhance your Elise or Exige in either road or track trim.