A DRIVE to produce the best engineers in the motorsport industry is being spearheaded by an Oxfordshire college.

Top name companies in motorsport like Benetton, TWR Arrows, Reynard and Parallel Motion have chosen Rycotewood College, Thame, to help produce the top technicians.

With the Heart of England Training and Enterprise Council they are sponsoring three-year full apprenticeships at the college designed to produce world-class workers.

Evers Pearce, at Rycotewood, said: "We are ideally placed because there are so many top motorsport companies all round us in Oxfordshire.

"So far on this specialist course we will have 11 young people, but we are hoping to get more later.

"For the first 12 weeks they will be in college full-time, learning basic skills and then they will go back to their employers.

"They will come here on day and block release courses to improve their skills. These will be specialist courses, not part of any other engineering course, and they are intended to produce high-quality engineers skilled at manufacturing and servicing for motor racing.

"It is a great feather in Rycotewood's cap."

The college started in the early years of this century as a rural crafts centre and for decades its main thrust has been in agricultural engineering and in fine craftsmanship and design in furniture.

In recent years it has branched out into car restoration, information technology and holistic medicine.

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