The Customer Racing Store at Hyundai Motorsport holds all the key elements to a competitive and successful car, both in the parts themselves and the people who handle them.
Trusted by a wide range of customers from around the world, they work tirelessly to deliver racing and rallying machines of the highest standard.
Although the customer vehicles are not run directly by us at events, they ultimately bear our Hyundai Motorsport badge, and therefore receive the same level of care and expertise from our team that is given to manufacturer entries. Additionally, the constant evolution of the motorsport landscape requires the Customer Racing Store to be adaptable to the various needs of our global customers.
Since the establishment of the Customer Racing division in 2015, which launched our first customer challenger, the i20 R5, we have since gone on to develop the programme further to include the i30 N TCR, the Veloster N TCR, the i20 N Rally2 and the Elantra N TCR – additions that required an expansion of the team’s workspace and workforce.
The main responsibility of the Customer Racing Store team is to ensure all the essential components of every customer car are kept in check. This takes shape in several ways, ranging from picking and packaging sales orders to organising shipments and transport. Store housekeeping is carried out weekly to provide reassurance that our workplace is well maintained; the close-knit team of seven make sure this is conducted thoroughly and efficiently.
The multi-functional roles within the Store allow the team to switch between a variety of tasks that are crucial to success. The team contributes to this with meticulous attention to detail working in parallel with high levels of concentration.
The members of staff begin their days with a 10-minute Employee Involvement team meeting that details the day’s schedule and allows them to share information with their colleagues. This interaction reinforces a positive working environment; an attitude that is necessary when working in a high-intensity sector such as motorsport.
The intensity of these roles can fluctuate throughout the year. During the winter months, things pick up steam in the Customer Racing Store. December is stock-take month, while January consistently entails a mountain of preparation for the new season, including the restocking of the mobile spares trucks among other challenges. Throughout the rest of the year, the team maintain these spares, providing them to customers when required as quickly as possible.
Working in conjunction with all other Customer Racing departments, the Store is the glue for the entire team. Due to its integrity to the process, they work closely with Quality Control for inspection, Sales and Workshop for picking, Production Planning for liaising over/about picking priority and reducing obsolete stock, and Purchasing to book in purchased parts and book out sub-contract parts.
The store team plays an invaluable role for our clients. Without them, the production of Customer Racing cars would not be able to run as faultlessly as it does; precision is as key in production as it is rallying and racing.
