Aerodynamics specialist TotalSim has chosen Silverstone Park to develop a 26,000ft2 ‘state of the art’ sports engineering facility.

The Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub will benefit from a £2 million Buckinghamshire Thames Valley Local Enterprise Partnership (BTVLEP) grant and will have two wind tunnels: one for cycling and other sports, such as wheelchair athletics, speed-skating, skeleton and running; the other for testing fabrics.

There will also be offices, design studios and workshops for production, prototyping and testing. It is anticipated that the facility will be completed in the first quarter of 2019 and will in due course provide up to 65 new jobs, including 10 apprenticeships.

TotalSim managing director Rob Lewis (www.totalsimulation.co.uk) said: “Tapping into the world-class high-tech skills pool around Silverstone enables us to create a unique innovation incubator for companies in sports engineering and services, which we predict will have global appeal.

If we can pool the right things together, then we believe that organisations will come from around the world to take advantage of the facility — thereby helping to put the UK at the forefront of the development of aerodynamic technologies.

"In fact, this could be the start of a whole series of ventures around Silverstone to do with sports science, engineering and education.”

TotalSim has already enjoyed considerable success in sports engineering, with Great Britain’s cycling team and other Olympic sports.

The company provides consultancy to the Silverstone Technology Cluster, along with Brackley-based additive-manufacturing specialist KWSP, which is helping with the overall design of the wind tunnels, as is former Olympic cyclist Chris Boardman.