Interviews

Planetlemans talks to Zytek’s John Manchester

© Planetlemans - Marcel ten Caat

He’s been working with racing engines for over two decades and is now Engineering Operations Director at Zytek Motorsport. John Manchester is one of the people that literally make endurance racing happen by being a fundamental part of a top chassis and engine manufacturer. We managed to get a slot in his morning schedule in order to discuss past, present and future of Zytek.

© Planetlemans - Gabriel Portos

PLM- John, when did you start at Zytek?

JM- I started back in 1987. I was working with Formula 1 engines before I joined and since then I have always been in the engine department.

PLM- What is the role of racing in Zytek?

JM- From a business point of view racing represents about 40% of the group’s turnover. We should not forget that Zytek’s roots are in motorsport, starting with engine management and then engines. Of course racing also serves the purpose of being a showcase for the group’s engineering abilities. As a matter of fact lots of the technology we have developed has made it into the automotive industry.

PLM- Is racing profitable for the Zytek Group?

JM- You have to be profitable these days in any business you run. We are divided in three departments but each one needs to deliver a profit to the group, you cannot have one department permanently subsidizing another.

PLM- What will happen if, as rumored, you lose the A1GP business to Ferrari?

JM- There’s actually many things on the pipeline, we could supply another single-engine formula for example. In terms of the impact on endurance racing, well, I have to say that we have an enormous amount of enquiries about our products these days, actually an all-time high and I’d be surprised if most of those would not turn into real deals.

PLM- How do you provide support for your customers in the endurance world?

JM- Let me start by tellig you that our customers are extremely important. In fact, we never intended to run a works team but we did it because we wanted to break into the European and US racing scene. We needed to showcase what the car could do but we never pursued a works team as a long term objective. Going back to the question we take a team of engineers for every race, we have a dedicated engineer per team (e.g. one for Binnie, another for Barazi, etc.) and then a multifunctional team (electrical, gear shift, engine management engineers) that are permanently available for all customers if they need them.

PLM- What about the Embassy deal, is that not a bit like competing with yourselves? Do you expect chassis customers to feel like they should get better treatment because they invest more in your product?

JM- Success generates more customers and we handle this in a very simple way: All engines are the same for all teams. As long as a Zytek product wins we are fine and we have no issue with just selling engines like in the case of Embassy or Binnie. On your other enquiry Zytek is extremely straight and above board with all customers. Any upgrade or update is communicated, delivered and deployed to all customers at the same time. Of course you could get questions coming from chassis customers to get better treatment (smiles) but our policy is very clear.

PLM- What other components are you supplying to Embassy?

JM- All electronic gearshift and other electronics. Zytek and Embassy act like a real joint partnership.

PLM- Do you use driver feedback of experienced drivers like Stefan Johansson for example, even if he is not racing with the works team?

JM- Yes, driver feedback from all Zytek teams about chassis and engine is definitely incorporated into our development.
PLM- You are showcasing your product in the last two rounds of the ALMS (Petit Le Mans, Laguna Seca) . In particular your ’orphan" LMP2 car will be there after two podiums at Le Mans and Silverstone.

JM- It is a big challenge. this car has had 3 different teams running it already, one for each race if you include Petit. However we have a good engineering team which is basically the same set of people always working with this car to bring continuity to the effort. We want to be as competitve as we can in these two races.

PLM- How did the LMP2 car got such an amazing performance, was it a new version of the car? And how did the deal with LNT come to be?

JM- We have a number of current projects with LNT, in fact for Silverstone they had Panoz that had been damaged at Spa, we started talking and it turned into a last minute one-off deal. On their performance, well, they have great drivers, both know Silverstone very very well and they found a good setup. The car was no different than the other (Barazi) car, we have no reason for having a different car.

PLM- Last question, John. Why did that car perform so well and we have not seen the same performance from your LMP1 car with the Arena team?

JM- A very difficult question for me to answer. The setup is ultimately up to the team. Arena is certainly a very strong and experienced team but they have had lots of driver changes this season so I assume they might need a bit more of stability to speed up the development.

Very open, very clear, very successful. Zytek has left a clear impression this year in terms of speed and results and John Manchester has clearly been instrumental for that. Let’s see how many Zyteks (chassis and engines) we see on the grid in 2008 on both sides of the Atlantic, whoever drives them will certainly have a top tool in their hands to win races.

gabriel@planetlemans.com