The most successful team in British Touring Car Championship history, Triple Eight, has today revealed an overhauled brand identity ahead of the 2015 race season, with a revised name, Triple Eight Racing, and brand logo that will be used across both its Touring Car and GT exploits. The new logo features three inter-woven eights and a more refined, modern font that brings about a minimalist feel to the famous racing brand. The colour palette also changes dramatically, leaving behind the navy, silver and white of old, for a classy black, gold and white, with the gold echoing the team’s winning heritage and the black its strength.
Bringing about the change is Triple Eight co-owner Lee Mowle and Communications Manager James Warnette, who had a requirement to reinvigorate the brand for commercial marketing of the brand to prospective partners and sponsors.
Mowle explains: “While touring car liveries will always be dictated by key sponsors, this branding was an important exercise for the team to go through to ensure we look respectable off-track as well as on it. We recognise the heritage behind the original logo and our goal was to connect to the past but also include elements of an evolution.
“On track Triple Eight has suffered somewhat of an identity crisis in recent years, with team names changing annually based upon the requirements of drivers, partners and such like. That’s not going to change too much, but what we wanted to do was bring about some level of consistency to our operation and ensure we were more easily identified, be it a BTCC weekend or a Blancpain (Endurance Series) weekend.
“We were also aware that our original logo had had a good run and the term ‘Race Engineering’, while still accurate for many tasks undertaken by the business, no longer accurately reflected our modern day role as a race team. The level of engineering input has become quite restricted and specialised in the modern era and is now strictly governed by tight technical regulations.”
Founded in 1996 by Ian Harrison, Roland Dane and Derek Warwick, the Triple Eight Race Engineering name originated when the plucky trio tried to entice an Asian manufacturer to go racing. The number eight is believed to be lucky in the Far East and because there were three of them, the name Triple Eight was decided upon. While that particular pitch proved to be unsuccessful, it was the beginning of a special chapter in motorsport.
“It’s hugely important for the team,” remarked, Warnette. “Globally, top race teams are now offering more than just race car preparation to a driver. Marketing, PR and event-based activation is all part of the deal if required. We’re confident it will be received well, but some sceptics will say, ‘if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it’, but the standards of presentation in motorsport increase year on year, and you can’t present to a sponsor with an out-dated brand. This isn’t just about 2015; it’s about the next ten to twenty years too.”
The team’s first season of racing came in 1997 when they ran Vauxhall’s effort in the BTCC; a relationship that lasted all the way until 2009 and yielded an impressive 20 championships in a 10-year period from 2001. Last year the team brought about yet another significant title with MG, defeating the works Honda team for the Manufacturer-Constructor title by almost 100 points.
An Expanded Operation
In 2013 the team entered the British GT Championship with a pair of BMW Z4 GT3s, and hit the ground running, finishing fifth in British GT that year. Over the past twelve months, Triple Eight has competed at the sharp end of the grid, making respectable debut appearances in the Blancpain Sprint Series (2 x second place class finishes in the Baku World Challenge), as well as a top six result in the finale of the Blancpain Endurance Series in Germany.
Across both GT and Touring Car, Triple Eight has a growing fan base. Over the course of the past twelve months the highly successful team has seen the two distinct audiences merge.
Warnette continues: “The team itself has fans, who, irrespective of driver or type of car, are proud to be aligned to the Triple Eight brand and until now, we’d done little to acknowledge this. It’s been really pleasing to see fans of those two disciplines begin to merge; we have GT fans interested in our BTCC endeavours and vice versa, with a significant portion of them attending both types of race meeting.
“This year we intend to roll out further marketing activities to engage with our fans and a new website, which caters for the modern race fan, which will be unveiled in the coming weeks.“