► BAC launches its own race series
► Identical cars and full arrive-and-drive package
► Two heats and one final at every round
BAC (or Briggs Automotive Company to give it its full name) is best known for its small, super-lightweight road-going single seaters that snaffle up lap records like Max Verstappen does purple sectors in Grand Prix qualifying. A small outfit based in Liverpool (that now exports cars to 47 countries),it knows a thing or two about being market disruptors.
So, rather than do what every other performance car maker seems to be doing and build an SUV, BAC has gone and created itself a one-make racing series set to kick-off in 2024 in Saudi Arabia. Called the Mono Cup, it’ll use an adapted racing version of the Mono and promises to deliver an exciting experience for both viewers and drivers alike.
To find out more, we sat down with Ian Briggs (founder and design director at BAC) for a quick chat to see what the series is all about.
So, Ian, there’s lots of one-make series around the world – what makes the Mono Cup so special?
Well, I think that the first thing is obviously that it’s a single seater formula style. Unlike Formula cars, it has enclosed wheels. So, in terms of safety in the kind of incidents that you would sometimes see in single seaters, then it obviously avoids that. Also, I think the big one is performance. The positioning of the of the Mono Cup is in quite a narrow void, or almost a blurred boundary between the upper echelons of single-make championship racing, which you would single out the likes of Porsche Supercup, Lamborghini Trofeo and Ferrari Challenge – that type of series – and then the Formula 4, 3 and 2 space which is predominantly made up of career aspirational drivers.
In that void, you’ve obviously got the crossover from single-make series that I mentioned into GT3, Blancpain, that kind of thing, where budgets are several million euros a year and cars are very expensive. It’s populated by a mixture of gentleman drivers and professional drivers and Mono Cup will be similar in the sense that it’s an International C race licence (required to partake).
We are vying to be the fastest one make championship in the world. We know from our performance testing with the current cars where we sit, and we know that the Cup car will be quicker, which means that we can quite confidently make that make that statement.
What will the format be?
The series is on an arrive-and-drive basis – there’s one entity that will run all the cars. That’s in order to provide a neutrality of equipment and neutrality of performance. But the key one is is that, traditionally, there would be a qualifying session, and the fast guy starts at the front and the slower guy starts at the back – that means racing’s perhaps not always quite as exciting as it could be.
If you wander down to your local karting track, you’ll see that karting’s been around for 50-60 years with a well-proven split grid or mixed grid style. So, (in Mono Cup) we’ll have two heats and a final, which means that everyone will get to start at the front and everyone will get to start at the back. And throughout the six race weekends everyone will start on each row of the grid which will then be reversed for their second heat and the aggregate results of those two heats will give them their grid position for the final.
You’ll see a lot of overtaking which is exciting, plus the associated thrills and spills with that. And from a driver skill perspective you’ll get to see not just who’s the fastest, but who’s good in traffic, who’s patient, how they manage slower drivers, where they choose to overtake and all that good stuff. So it is a real breath of fresh air in true BAC disruptive fashion.
Why is the championship based out of Saudi Arabia? What was the attraction there?
I think it’s 20% of Formula One races are now happening within the Middle East, so you can see that there are exceptional circuits. Obviously, weather becomes less of an issue in the Middle East. And because it’s a winter series, you know, we can expect temperatures to be typical, but not too extreme.
It is also a huge growth area, certainly as far as the car industry is concerned. And I think certainly, as far as the Middle East is concerned, it’s an area where we should be as a brand. BAC Saudi Arabia has got off to a screaming start.
You mentioned that one entity will run all the cars – does that mean every competitor will have their own race engineer if they want to make setup tweaks?
Yeah, so ride height and pitch is defined by BAC, as are spring rates and camber. The tyres are also fixed and supplied by Pirelli. But you will be able to personalise the car in terms of brake balance and damper settings. So the dampers are an evolution of the current platform. They are adjustable, but they’re also adjustable for high speed and low speed. So depending on your preference, if you’d like a car with a bit more front end, or a looser rear end, or whatever, you will be able to tweak the car.
But what it means is we can control what we’re doing, we know where the car performs best, we know the window in which it performs best, and then the driver will be able to tweak based on their personal setup around there.
So from a sort of operational management perspective, it will be quite straightforward to operate and look after these cars. But that’s a long-winded answer of saying yes, you will have your own engineer and there will be a technician that manages the car for you. And there will be a data truck where you’ll be able to sit down with the engineers look at your performance versus perhaps some of your competitors. We’ll also have driver coaches on hand as well. And then we’re also going to have some performance coaches who will look after things like food, wellness, hydration, that kind of thing to make sure that obviously competing in in that kind of environment that the drivers are as well looked after as possible.
And will this move into motorsport will then trickle back into the BAC road cars, as we usually see with this sort of this sort of operation?
Again, very good question. And yes, is the answer. So, you know, everything we do a BAC is designed for a purpose. We’re obviously a design innovation led business, but everything we do is to fulfil a need. And so what you will see on the Cup car will be cascaded down into the into the products that are available for upgrades but also onto the road as well.
Keep an eye on this page as more info about the Mono Cup is released throughout the year!