Delta, one year on

Last year, we embarked on an exciting and topical new pathway to expand our offering, accelerating our journey to sustainability by acquiring the Silverstone based company, Delta Motorsport.

The acquisition felt very natural as the two founders of Delta, Simon Dowson and his late business partner Nick Carpenter were looking to make a big step up with the business. The company had a lot of engineering capability, but to exploit their skills to the fullest, Delta needed to scale up their manufacturing abilities. Nick and Simon agreed that the best way to move forward quickly and maximise their potential was to either offer a part stake in the business or look to be acquired by a larger company that could support their needs.

From all of the options that were on the table, Cosworth exhibited the strongest synergies. “The operation at Northampton in particular is the level where Delta wanted to build up to” said Delta Cosworth Managing Director, Simon Dowson. “Low volume, high precision and performance programmes as a tier one supplier to OEMs, that’s Cosworth’s specialty, and this is where we wanted to steer our focus”.

Additionally to this synergy, both Nick and Simon grew up with Cosworth being a household name. The pair were very familiar with the brand and understood what Cosworth stood for; 60 years of engineering innovation and success, all focused on developing world beating technology for the future. Partnering with Cosworth was a no brainer, consequently the acquisition was completed on the 31st of March 2021.
Over the past year the focus has been on developing our capabilities of the group – integrating Delta into our existing structure that includes propulsion development at 
Northampton and electronics in Cambridge.

The first year has been challenging, as you will find with any kind of amalgamation work that take place between two businesses, but we have found solutions to keep this transitional period on track. In addition to the integration, we have had some great successes including the development of the Envision Virgin Racing, two-seater experience car.

This is the world’s first two seat, electric formula race car and it showcases the capabilities Cosworth now has for complete vehicle systems engineering and integration. The car was fully designed and built in six months, all in house. With Delta’s vehicle development and battery knowledge we were able to put together a masterpiece in electric vehicle design. The car was unveiled at the COP26 climate change conference, the perfect setting to showcase our sustainable technology and electrification innovations.

The Cat Gen programme has also benefitted from the acquisition. Development of the device has continued at a rate of knots, and we’ve been fortunate enough to showcase the technology at several events in 2021.
The Cat Gen has gathered a lot of attention over the past year, with interest being shown across the marine, defence, automotive and construction sectors. With the additional resources of the wider Cosworth Group, the Cat Gen team are investigating the application of Hydrogen as a sustainable fuel within the system. This combination would yield zero emission power generation that can be used widely across multiple sectors.

The future of our strengthened Cosworth Group is looking towards the scaling up of our current offerings, with a robust focus on battery technology and electrification. Our electronics division and propulsion specialists now have the support of Delta’s innovation and system integration, to enable a broader offering from the group.
We have some incredible programmes in the pipeline that will utilise our entire offering of expertise, and we hope you’ll be with us for the journey.