British firm Xtrac supplies transmissions for F1, Le Mans, Indycar and rallying — and its motorsport expertise is now being applied to road cars, including the Pagani Huayra.
The products of British engineering firm Xtrac are ubiquitous in global motorsport. From Formula 1 to Le Mans to the Dakar Rally and beyond, the Berkshire-based company has designed and built transmissions that have performed a vital role in hundreds, if not thousands, of winning machines.
Although motorsport still makes up 90 per cent of Xtrac’s work, in recent years the company has broadened its scope beyond the core business it has been involved with for almost three decades, ever since company founder Mike Endean contributed to the development of the famous G4 Xtrac Ford Escort that Martin Schanche drove to rallycross glory in the mid-1980s.
Xtrac has burgeoning interests in automotive and engineering, mainly focusing on road cars, military, marine and aerospace interests. One of the high-profile projects was building the seven-speed automated manual gearbox that sits in the Pagani Huayra supercar, a task that was born directly out of the expertise that Xtrac has acquired from sportscar competition.
The phrase ‘race to road’ is now an integral part of the company’s philosophy. Clive Woolmer, general manager for automotive and engineering, says: “Where did ‘race to road’ come from? Pagani came to us for a race product, for the Zonda R, and then said, ‘This is great. We like the marriage. Can we do a road car gearbox together?’.
"The transverse-cluster race gearbox turned into the transverse-cluster road car ’box in the seven-speed automated manual, targeted to be lighter than a double-clutch gearbox. That was all that Horacio [Pagani] wanted. He can say, ‘I’ve got a transmission with Le Mans pedigree in my road car’. That gives him a distinct discussion point with his customers. And then really off the back of that, we’re stepping forward.”
The Xtrac story can be traced back to 1984, when Mike Endean left transmission company Hewland to set up his own business. Endean’s knowledge of creating four-wheel drive transmission systems was soon sought out by World Rally Championship teams, and his company’s skill at packaging transverse competition gearboxes also meant that F1 squads were knocking at his door.
Work flooded in and Xtrac expanded rapidly. In 1997, current company president Peter Digby led a management and workforce buyout of Xtrac, and at the turn of the millennium it moved to its current 88,000-square-foot facility in Thatcham.
These days, the company is represented in almost all forms of motorsport. It will supply transmissions to more than half the field at this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours. It has exclusively provided the gearboxes for Indycars since 1999. It builds gearboxes for the Marussia F1 squad and supplies components to other teams. And it is involved in other projects as varied as motocross bikes and Brazilian stock cars.
Technical director Adrian Moore (formerly of the Ferrari and McLaren F1 teams) oversees the engineering department, while Woolmer’s division handles the defence, marine, aerospace and road car business. It has proved a growth area; Xtrac enjoyed its best two years of business yet in 2011 and 2012 and has now swelled to 275 employees.
“The non-motorsport side of the business is about using the pedigree we’ve got from racing and transferring that into the other market sectors,” says Woolmer. “We’ve got a really good capability here from both a design and manufacturing perspective to bring things to market.”
When working with other industries, Xtrac uses its vast experience of the flexible, fast-moving motorsport industry to its advantage.
Woolmer says: “I worked for Land Rover, BMW Group and Rolls-Royce for 20 years and the one thing I’ve found coming from an OEM [original equipment manufacturer] background is how difficult it is to package things in very little space, particularly when those components have to perform in a strenuous way. Here, it’s what we do on a daily basis. Another part of the attraction is fast turnaround. We use the motorsport ethos to turn a programme round in six months from design to manufacture, something OEMs struggle to match.”
Key to that rapid response ethos is Xtrac’s ability to research, design, machine and test components all under one roof. At its vast facility, Xtrac has rigs and simulators to carry out all manner of practical and theoretical testing of transmission systems, and hugely expensive machines for jobs such as turning, milling, intricate gear cutting, grinding, polishing and heat treatment.
Its in-house metallurgists have a close relationship with Tata Steel, which supplies raw materials that meet Xtrac’s specific demands – namely, fatigue-resistant steels that can be machined to a microscopic degree of accuracy and consistency and also stand up to heat treatment (for extra strength).
The potential for Xtrac to develop new opportunities in the road car industry alongside its motorsport heartland is being made greater by the increasingly convergent paths that the two industries are now following, as well as the push towards low-carbon technology that’s being encouraged by the government.
But Xtrac doesn’t have ambitions to become a supplier to major manufacturers. Woolmer says: “The sports car manufacturers are the most attractive customers to Xtrac. We’re not looking to be a massive gearbox manufacturer producing millions. It’s all about technology, innovation, keeping it small and satisfying the sports car premium luxury sector.”