Van Diemen Sports 2000 History

In the UK, Sports 2000 was a recognised arena for car and driver development during the late seventies and eighties. It was a high profile and competitive series attracting many sports car manufacturers including Lola, Tiga, Shrike, March, Royal and Reynard.

Many of the design features that we recognise in Sports car racing around the globe today, were pioneered and developed in early Sports 2000 cars. The single engine series created close racing between different drivers and manufactures, and proved to be an environment for natural car development as technology, expertise and experience took the manufactures through many evolutionary stages.

Van Diemen entered the sports 2000 market in 1994 with an Andy Forby designed car. The originally design brief for the Van Diemen dictated that the car should be immensely strong and safe with great torsional stiffness, while taking advantage of aerodynamic advances and latest technology. The plan was to enter the US market with the revolutionary auto gearbox; the resulting cars were originally shipped to the USA, as the home series had by now been dropped from front line racing. The car was subsequently banned in the US because of its auto gearbox, and so failed to sell in any numbers. A couple of converted cars were run but failed to make progress, for one reason or another the car failed to show its full potential at that time.

It was not until the resurgence of the sports 2000 series in the UK, which in the 2001 season, saw more cars that at any previous time in the history of the series, that the Van Diemen was given the chance to perform properly.

Nik Johnson took his Van Diemen to the inaugural championship title in 2001 winning outright five of the eight race series.

The car had over the previous 18 months gone through a development process in conjunction with the manufacturer, and under the personal guidance of the founder of Van Diemen, Ralf Firman. The early problems were identified and the result was to alter the original front and rear suspension systems. The car was widened at the rear and the front rocker system replaced with a conventional spring and wishbone configuration. This gave the car a more traditional feel, and greater rear stability and proved to be a significant development forward.

The future for Van Diemen within Sports 2000 looks assured with the introduction of the latest Ford Engine, the 'Duractec', the first truly worldwide engine designed to power Ford through the next quarter Century. The conversion time from Pinto spec to Duratec being only a few hours turnaround.

With 4 new cars in the manufacturing process at this time and renewed interest from the USA, Ancaster Leisure and Van Diemen will be running cars both in the UK and USA in 2002. They will undoubtedly be at the forefront of Sports 2000 now and in the future.