Handling problems that bug racing car drivers

Cornering Force was set up to make fast cars go even faster. Achieving that is all about understanding the technology, Simon Roberts tells Peter Edwards.

SIMON Roberts is standing in a workshop in North Yorkshire, leaning gently on a banana-yellow Lotus and surrounded by several more expensive-looking sports cars.

Having left his job as a food standards executive, he now makes a living from fixing up the playthings of racers, petrolheads and millionaires. It is either the dream of every male fortysomething or a mid-life crisis.

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It soon becomes clear that Mr Roberts, tall, thin and energetic, is sound in body and mind. Rather than being the expensive indulgence of a middle-aged man, Cornering Force, his race car dynamics firm, is the fulfilment of two lifelong interests: engineering and speed.

And while Mr Roberts, 49, is happy to get his hands dirty, his Harrogate base is clearly not your average grimy workshop. It's a garage-cum-performance laboratory selling racing car parts on the side.

Mr Roberts started two-and-a-half years ago but this is his first fully operational year. He set up Cornering Force after stepping down from his job at The PAI Group, the Harrogate food certifier which he helped build up from a two-man business in 1995 to an employer of 120 people today. He has kept a shareholding in the firm but now his day job involves sticking his head under the bonnets of fast cars of which small boys can only dream.

Having spent years growing an agri-food certifying business, Mr Roberts said he wants to bring the focus on costs, efficiency and reliability to the mechanical industry – one which traditionally produces more images of unshaven bruisers in dirty overalls than sleek performance analysis.

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"People bring us problems and we do some analysis, identify the reasons and then do something about it.

"Handling has always been seen as a bit of a black art. It can be a trial and error thing at club level. Customers bring handling problems where it doesn't handle like it should. They say they don't really know why, so we will get it in for a benchmark analysis on the set-up.

"The idea behind it is that you have all the information at your fingertips."

The firm examines cars and often hires a test driver to take them out for a spin while they are attached to Cornering Force sensors, which look at factors like tyre temperature and pressure, damper settings and balance, handling and the all-important lap times.

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Mr Roberts and his colleague can dismantle the suspension and measure the key parameters, for example, corner weights, the distance between the wheels, the centre of gravity and other details.

That may sound a bit technical but it's all about helping competitors shave a vital few tenths-of-a-second off their time. The technology helps lower the load variations and ensures the cars have maximum grip, which is vital when travelling at more than 100mph.

Mr Roberts, whose fastest track speed in his 1978 Lotus Esprit is 115mph, set up his firm because he wanted to supply the amateur racing sector with the quality of facilities, expertise and services which has only been available to professionals.

He says he can typically "sort out" competitors' cars from about 750, depending on the work needed.

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"My interest is developing new ideas and trying to take them to another level to make them work. PAI was a similar sort of business because it is quite niche and there is quite a significant barrier to entry – which you can break."

The target for 2010 is to establish a presence in the marketplace and break even. Afterwards he wants to develop his mix of products and services and take turnover to 250,000 within two to three years' time. It has not always been easy, but isn't the first year of a business supposed to be the hardest?

"It has struck me how difficult it is – not in terms of thinking up ideas because I have a queue of ideas, but getting people to do what you want and on time. Getting anything done on a reasonable timescale seems the hard part – it is like juggling soot. That has been an eye-opener."

Of course, it is not just working on the cars that generates income for Mr Roberts, but the products he supplies. Anti-roll bars (ARBs)are vital to the performance of a car and Cornering Force designs and manufactures them as well as other components. The firm has an electronic ARB test rig and will measure the stiffness of a car's bars, as well as making bespoke ARBs in various styles.

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When he started out, Mr Roberts was interested in making dampers, springs or roll bars. Having ruled out the first two because the products were too cheap or the sector too crowded, he plumped for the third option. It looks like he made the right choice because so far he has had requests for ARBs from around this country as well as Sweden and Holland.

"People take these cars to race days and are looking for great handling and great performance. We are producing a real alternative for them.

"There are people who will sell you bolts and components but I have not been able to find people who will help you understand it and can do what you want to do.

"I think there is an opportunity to take the performance and the expertise that is visible in teams and apply it to the mass market." he adds.

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It sounds like a reasonable business proposition and there's not a hint of the unsustainable vanity projects which, to the anxiety of their family, are set up by businessmen who have already made it in another industry. Even Mr Roberts's wife, a corporate financier, surely approves.

Lifetime hobby now a business

Simon Roberts said he has been involved with cars since before his feet reached the pedals.

He has been an engineer for more than 25 years, in design, fabrication and installation in the offshore oil industry and then in the food inspection sector.

"My hobby has always been in racing cars and design and building cars," he said.

"My father raced cars and carts and I picked it up from him."