LEADING motorsport and engineering company boss Tom Walkinshaw has won a top honour from Oxford Brookes University.

Mr Walkinshaw, chairman of the TWR Group and managing director of the Leafield-based Arrows Grand Prix team, is among 11 people to receive an honorary degree from Oxford Brookes University next week.

The Honorary Degree of Doctor of engineering is in recognition of his contribution to the design, engineering and manufacturing of road and racing cars since he entered the sport in 1968.

As a driver he scored a number of international successes before retiring in 1986 to concentrate on the Jaguar sports car racing programme that TWR ran for the next six years from its base at Kidlington.

During that time the team won the classic 24-hour French race at Le Mans twice and the World Sports Car Championship three times.

Today he oversees a worldwide engineering group that employs 1,500 people working in the UK, Sweden, Australia and the US.

Projects run by the team have included the Aston Martin DB7 sports car and the Volvo C70, which along with motorsport victories won by the Benetton team and the Jaguar XJR-9, in the Formula One and World Sports Car Championships, have established the company at the forefront of the automotive world.

In all 11 Honorary Doctorates of Arts, Engineering, Law, letters and Science will be awarded by Oxford Brookes University along with undergraduate and postgraduate degrees for 2,250 students.

More than 8,000 people, 1,000 of them watching via a special live video link, are expected at the 11 degree ceremonies being held at the university's Gipsy Lane Campus in Headington next week.

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