South Australian company, Pfitzner Performance Gearboxes, has infiltrated the China Rally with a supply contract to fit out the whole WanYu Rally team with straight cut close ratio gear sets for its eleven rally cars.
The vehicles, which are all Mitsubishi Evolution rally cars, have run a variety of gearboxes over the past season but have struck a deal with PPG to supply the whole team and progressively remove the old sets. Including spares, this is expected to be a $200,000 deal over the next 12 months.
“It’s another great feather in our international cap,” said PPG Marketing Manager Tim Possingham.
Rally and motorsport in general in China is on a rapid rise in parallel with the uprising of a wealthy middle class in the country.
In another boost for Australian motorsport businesses, Martini Racing Products has done a similar deal to supply racing fuel to the large team and recently shipped out a 20-foot container of High Octane Racing Fuel to supply the team over the next season.
The WanYu Rally team competes in Rally China as well as the Asia Pacific Rally Championship, which sees the product make its way to places such as New Caledonia, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia amongst others.
The Chinese team had done testing with various brands of imported fuels and found Martini to be the best performing when compared to French and American brands.
”Australia and Martini Racing in particular have had a long history of development in the unleaded fuel market. Our (Martini) unleaded race fuel technology is the best in the world because we have had 17 years of compulsory development,” said Managing Director Tony Cuschieri.
“I suppose you could say, unlike countries like the USA that still use old outdated leaded technology in the majority of their race fuels, that our company is dedicated to producing fluid products not only of a world standard, but ones that set the standard. The China deal is proof of that.”