Motorsport used to be regarded as the testbed for many of the innovations that would in time percolate their way through to the cars that you and I drive. Developments in areas such as braking and aerodynamics, for example, started on racecars and later progressed into the mainstream automotive industry. But that was then and this is now. And a couple of conferences on the cross-links between motorsports and the automotive mainstream in the past month or so have started from a common premise: that it's hard to think where in the past 15 to 20 years the two sectors, both of them now seen as significant industries for UK plc, have had much real influence on each other. Dick Glover, research director at McLaren, has a foot in both camps, since his company builds road-going cars as well as being a long-time leader in motorsports. Speaking at a Royal Academy of Engineering conference on Innovation in Automotive at the end of January, he was quick to point out that there had been 'lots of people who had moved from racing into the automotive industry".
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