News from the workshop at RSD
After the outstanding 1 2 3 result on the 2014 Roger Albert Clark Rally, and a fantastic haul of championship silverware from their customers, the team at Malton based Rallysport Development have spent the winter getting ready for the 2015 season.
Matthew Robinson and Nick Elliott have got off to a great start in their RSD built MK2 Escorts. Both crews have already proved to be the ones to beat on the first few events of the 2015 calendar.
Most of the team’ s attention has been focused on developing the Fiat 131 which debuted on the Malton Stages Rally last year and finished 3rd o/a on the RAC.
“After our success on the Roger Albert Clark we came away with a lot of ideas for developing the 131 further” explains Chris Deighton of RSD “The car ran really well on the event, however we felt that there was more potential from the engine and a lot to be gain from the suspension. We have spent the winter working closely with Bilstein in Germany on dampers and have made some modifications to the cylinder head patterns. Both these components are now in production and we will be out testing shortly”.
As well as developing the 131, RSD now stock a vast amount of new, remanufactured Group4 parts for the Fiat 131 Abarth. These are all available through the company’ s website www.rallysport-development.co.uk where you can also keep up to date with up and coming events and see the latest product launches.
RSD currently have 5 group4 Fiat 131 Abarth’ s in the workshop as well as a number of Mk2 Escorts, these should all be hitting the stages later on this year. Fabrication and preparation of the shells and components have always been the main stay of RSD’ s work, however the engine and gearbox build side of the business is really taking off. Kevin Theaker (MD of RSD) has been building Steve Bannisters and Matthew Robinsons engines for the last 2 years and is also responsible for the build and development of the 16 valve fuel injected Fiat engine. These and many more products are available directly from RSD.