K&N Sponsors Swedish Team - Bryntesson MotorSport in Camaro Cup 2010 Effort
- 8 Nov 2010
"We started with a Camaro Gen.1 and then Gen.2, and so on, until this year when we implemented the new Camaro Gen.5 2010. The biggest difference in the car through the years is that before this car, we always took street cars and stripped them down and made race cars of them. The Gen. 5 car however is a complete racecar with a steel-tube chassis and fiberglass body. The only thing stock is the outside mirrors," explains Bryntesson. This year kicking off the Camaro Cup 2010, 35 cars stood on the starting grid, with a fairly even mix of Gen.4 and 5 cars. Next year it's expected that there will be at least 40 cars in the running, and most of them will be Gen. 5 cars.
"We are running together with Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC) and currently we are running six race weekends, with two races each weekend," says Bryntesson.
"For 2011 the schedule is not yet ready. But I think it will be at the following race tracks: Mantorp Park (two races), Karlskoga (one race), Knutstorp (one race), Falkenberg (one race) and Jyllandsringen in Denmark (one race)." During the 2010 season the Camaro Cup saw over 75,500 spectators at those six races. There was also an unprecedented amount of exclusive TV programming devoted to the series. "We've been racing our Gen.4 cars for almost nine years and our series needed a change. When GM started producing the Gen.5 Camaro back in 2007, the members in our drivers association decided that we should try to get this car," says Bryntesson. "I and a friend, Hans Emerén, earned our associations trust, and we were given the responsibility to run this project. First we looked at possibilities to produce this car in Sweden, but we soon found out that the cost would be too dramatically high. So we decided to use our experience from our old backgrounds. Emerén was classic car restorer, and I was a European Top Fuel driver. Between us we had several old contacts in the U.S. that we used, and in short time we were pointed towards a racecar producer up in Michigan called Howe Racing Enterprises. We contacted Howe and he was interested to produce those cars for us. We made up our guidelines together, and then we contacted GM Performance parts division and asked them about a body in white to make moulds from." "This was early in 2007, but GM believed in us and offered to help us produce the racing chassis. Then around September of 2008 the car was ready to run, but we still did not have a body. Our friends at GM were contacted again, and in the beginning of 2009, we were the first one to get our body in white - wow what happiness that was." "Moulds were made and body panels were put in place by Howe racing enterprises. But as always in big projects like this, time was flying by, and our presentation at one of the biggest car shows in Sweden in April 2009 was running out of time. We decided then that we needed to get the cars tested at race tracks in the U.S." "We did some testing outside Chicago with driver Nic Jonsson (races ALMS prototype cars for Khron racing). Then, when testing and developing was finished, we put our car on a Cargo flight to Sweden, and made the first presentation ever at Grande Finale at Mantorp Park, at end of September 2009." Bryntesson says his team has been involved with the Camaro Cup since 2003. As an old Top Fuel driver he says he just loves V8 engines, even the smaller ones. His racing career started in 1981, first racing Super Stock, then stepping up to Top Methanol dragsters in 1988. "We set a few top speed records in Europe and finished second two times in the European Championship. In 1995 we won Swedish Championship, and after that we canceled our successful drag racing career." "After that I moved over to touring cars and was driving a couple of Mercedes DTM cars in a Swedish series. But then I wanted to get back to V8 cars, and that was how I got involved in Camaro Cup," outlines Bryntesson. "I continued as a driver in the Camaro for four years, but after things started growing, I decided to put all my efforts towards improving my racing business, and the racing team, so I stepped down from driving and bought more cars." This year Bryntesson employed four drivers on his team. Bryntesson uses the information he gathers on the track to build racing engines, rear-ends, transmissions, and other racing related products for others through his company. "We are a total of five people, and we are starting to build a bigger shop so we can have everything in one place," he adds. Bryntesson first got involved with K&N when he was still a drag racer, he used K&N oil filters because he wanted the best he says. "Now I have a business relationship with G Partners (Kjell-Åke Gunarsson) that is my contact to K&N. We use K&N filters for oil, air, water ventilation, and also for our crank case ventilation. We see when we dyno test our engines that the horsepower and torque increase when we use air filters from K&N - there is no doubt about that. K&N oil filters we also love, because they flow really well, and they take care of all the small parts that other oil filters don't do. We also get really good support from K&N - we just think that their stuff is the best out there - period." Find K&N products for your vehicle using the K&N application search then use the K&N dealer search to find a K&N dealer in your part of the world. |
