Caterham have begun work on their new ‘Technical Centre’ based in Leafield where the team will relocate all its companies to following the Hungarian Grand Prix.
The site was formerly owned by the Arrows outfit before Super Aguri acquired it for their operation which terminated in 2008.
Caterham will relocate its Formula 1 team, GP2 team and Caterham Cars businesses from Norfolk to the much larger site this August. Whilst Caterham Composites and CTI (Caterham Technology and Innovation) will remain at their current Hingham site.
Team owner Tony Fernandes believes the site will provide them better facilities to enable them to catch the mid-field teams at a faster rate.
“Work has now started at Leafield,” he said. “The first task is to refurbish the whole site and prepare it for a long and successful future. While that work is taking place the F1 team’s race trucks have left Hingham with our 2012 race cars for the last time. The next time they are back in the UK they will go straight to Leafield and that is excellent news for everybody associated with Caterham Group.
“More than 200 of the F1 team staff are making the move to Oxfordshire over the next few weeks and when we have finished the refurbishment, in late October 2012, we will have a facility that will put us on a par with the teams we are trying to catch in F1. Importantly, it will also give us the base we need to allow Caterham Group to achieve the impossible for many years to come. This is why I am so excited about what we have ahead of us, and this is why I am now dreaming of bigger, better and more ambitious plans than ever before.”
Technical director Mark Smith is hoping the relocation to what’s known as ‘Motorsport Valley’ will encourage potential employees to join the company, who were unwilling to relocate from the Oxfordshire area to Norfolk.
“One of the immediate benefits of the move is in attracting people to come and work with us,” he said. “Since I joined the team in 2011 I have been aware that there have been people we wanted to bring to Norfolk who were reluctant to move their families out of ‘motorsport valley’ where all the UK based F1 teams, and their associated supply chains and partners, are based.
“There has never been an issue with people not sharing our vision, being as excited about our future as everyone who works with Tony and Riad are, but it was undeniable that geography may have prevented us from expanding at quite the rate we want to. Now Leafield is open we have no barriers. We are in the heart of the motorsport industry, not only in the UK but worldwide, and we have an aggressive employment plan in place that will help us keep moving up the grid. With so much investment made in giving us this platform to work from now it is down to the people who work in Caterham Group and everybody we work with to help us keep achieving our goals and we could not ask for better motivation than that.”
