If you'd ever wondered why Westcott Venture Park seems to boast more than its fair share of sports cars, wonder no more, it's all down to those lucky people at Topcats Racing!
Topcats Racing UK, an endurance racing team and leading independent TVR, Marcos & V8 service specialist, was established in 2002 and has been servicing the needs of TVR owners as well as running a successful race team from the site ever since.
Headed-up by husband and wife team, Warren and Charlotte Gilbert, both accomplished sports car racing drivers, Topcats Racing is no kitten and during it's time at Westcott has grown into a true lion of a business. Despite challenging economic times, when luxury goods such as sports cars might be expected to take a back seat, Topcats Racing has continued to grow. To aid this expansion Topcats has recently purchased 0.4acres from Rockspring to enable it to expand its WVP premises with the construction of a new 8,000 sq. ft. purpose built facility.
Construction is already underway to create the new workshop accommodating up to seven car ramps in addition to storage space, an office, 22 car parking spaces and a customer waiting area overlooking the racing side of the business. On track to open in 2014, as might be expected, the new facility is being constructed with as much meticulous detail and engineering as the team’s beloved race cars.
“We are very excited about the new building which is being constructed from materials with motorsport at the forefront of our minds,” comments Warren Gilbert, director and team principal. “For example, the steel being used is galvanised to give it a superior finish preventing corrosion and we have also designed an 'L shaped' building to provide customers with an insight into our racing world. We hope lots of other Westcott residents will pop over to have a look at what we are up to.”
Warren Gilbert has almost 30 years in the car sales business too. He has quite a reputation for sourcing very specific cars for clients. Most recently and notably, a Lamborghini Jalpa, which was the official press car for its launch, a Diablo and a Audi RS6 V10 to name a just a few that have been acquired with meticulous scrutiny. Warren sources the everyday car too with the same enthusiasm and vigor.
With a stable of endurance race cars including a Marcos Mantis GT2 and a GT3, a Mosler MT900 GT3 and a TVR Sagaris GT when the season beckons, the race team and drivers will be competing in races varying in length from two hours to 24hours at tracks throughout the UK so don’t forget to follow your neighbours successes in the current season.
Looking ahead, Warren is excited about the future of Topcats, commenting; “We have ambitious expansion plans and Westcott is the perfect location to make that happen. On the practical side, the park provides us with secure premises, it's centrally located making it easy to reach for TVR and Marcos enthusiasts up and down the country and we now have our dream purpose-built space. But in addition to those important and practical factors, we love being at Westcott. It's like one big family with all of the businesses working together and it’s great when we see other tenants who wish us luck, and give us a cheer, or occasional commiseration, on a race result.”
And if on reading this you are tempted to park up the family sedan and live out your racing driver fantasies, have a chat with Topcats. When they are not servicing or racing cars, Topcats run driver experiences at Silverstone F1 track so you can unleash your inner revhead!
