Total MX-5 – July 2019

Summer 2019 | TOTAL MX-5 |^29

[ MOTORSPORT PROFILE ]

400 metres away a team of BOFI’s
extended family has set up an Autosolo
course on a section of Elvington
Airfield’s concrete apron, and doing
demo runs through the cones and
enticing rally goers to have a go for
themselves in their own MX-5. So, clearly
no diminishing of their passion for
grassroots motorsport during the
intervening period since last we met.
But there has been a fundamental
change to BOFI Racing in recent months:
the outfit’s three founder members,
Daniel Marshall, Leigh Gray and James
Ellington, have given up their day jobs,
and are now completely focused on the
activities of BOFI Racing – that is,
researching, developing, manufacturing
and sourcing performance and tuning
parts for Mazda’s finest – and promoting
motorsport in all its forms to the wider
MX-5 community.

‘It was a natural extension of where

we’d come to,’ explains Dan. ‘We were

doing enough business on a part-time

basis that turning it into a full-time job,

even on lower pay, made sense – so now

we get to indulge our passion and get

paid for doing it.

‘I got into MX-5s in the early 2010s

when a colleague introduced me to his

supercharged mk2. That inspired me to

go out and buy my own 1.6 which I

performed a VVT engine swap on, partly

as a means to keep up with Leigh – I’d

known him since school but we’d gone

our separate ways then met up again

through the MX-5 connection – who was

competing in a turbocharged NB [mk2].

‘As a consequence of becoming so

embroiled in wanting to make our cars

faster and faster, we spent a lot of time

on the internet and on forums checking

out new parts and reading people’s

experiences. BOFI Racing started out as

a technical blog to help out the MX-5

racing community: we’d test and

document products that we’d used and

liked, and recommend the good stuff to

other people in the same way as we

would to our friends. There’s a lot of BS

out there, a lot of acceptance of the status

quo, and what we were doing – and are

still doing – is challenging commonly

held views and offering other options.

‘For instance, we see some forums

recommending the cheapest part that

will do the job, whereas we advise

people to look towards middle and

higher quality components that will do

the job really well and last. For that

reason we’ve developed our own turbo

kit centred around a Garrett turbo rather

than the default TD04 – the Garrett is so

well designed and engineered that you

can run anything between 200 and 500 at

Motorsport doesn’t get

more grassroots than

blasting around a course

marked with cones...