The Thruxton Retro race meeting in June 2025 encompassed three rounds of the Superformance Ferrari Club Classic Series. One car stood out from the pack by virtue of it being the only open-top machine on the grid.
The driver of this immaculate F355 Spider turned out to be Colin Sowter, who just happens to be the boss of worldwide Ferrari parts supplier, and series sponsor [and FORZA advertiser—Ed.], Superformance. The phrase “Two birds with one stone” springs to mind, and the amiable, 66-year-old Sowter was happy to tell me the story behind the company, which started with his family’s business: repairing accident-damaged cars.
“Superformance was founded 43 years ago by a chap called Mike Elliott, who ran the business from a lock-up garage at the back of his house,” explained Sowter.
“We used to do all his bodywork and paintwork on the Ferraris and Fiat Dinos when he needed it, so we had a connection going back years. My father and Mike both wanted to retire around the same time, so I bought Superformance. That was 20 years ago, and I have transformed it into what it is today, which is very different.”
Colin Sowter first raced this 348 Challenge.
Superformance currently employs 15 people and has three warehouses full of Ferrari parts. It sells parts all over the world, often to official Ferrari dealers that have an older vehicle and need restoration bits that are no longer available from the factory itself.
“The U.S. market is a very important part of our business,” Sowter adds. “We have lots of private and trade customers because we stock a lot of parts that aren’t always available from American aftermarket sellers. In these internet days and with excellent worldwide shipping, we don’t need to have agents in other countries.”
Sowter himself has always been a Ferrari fan. As a youngster, he had a poster of his favorite Prancing Horse, a 308 GTB, on his bedroom wall. He would later buy that fiberglass dream car, which he still owns, but before then he became a serious racer.
From the age of 14, Sowter raced in motocross, but, at 30, after too many broken bones, he moved into karting. He reached a high level in National competition, but then broke his back in a nasty rollover crash. Sowter decided he needed something more substantial, and with a roof, so he bought a Porsche 924 and raced that for three years until taking a 15-year break while building up his newly acquired business.
IN 2018, I STARTED RACING A 348 CHALLENGE in the Ferrari Owners’ Club Historic Series,” Sowter recalls. “I raced that for seven seasons and notched up multiple class wins along the way—so much so that, had it been an official championship, I would have won the Class 4 title five times. But I wanted to move to a car that was capable of winning overall, so I decided to build a 355.”
At the time, Superformance actually had an F355 Spider, which had been crashed in Japan and imported to the UK by a salvage dealer. Sowter planned to dismantle it, but, after friends advised him to do something useful with the Ferrari instead, he decided to turn it into a race car. It ended up taking two years to build it up from a bare chassis, engine, and gearbox into a track-ready machine.
“I have an in-house full-time man called Lewis Sharman, who is an excellent engineer and car builder,” says Sowter. “We stripped the car to a bare shell and acid dipped it so we could see the wood from the trees. Thankfully, it was mainly panel damage. We set about repairing the car properly and installed a very substantial roll cage. It’s strange that, in view of my earlier accidents and saying that I needed a roof over my head, I’ve ended up racing a convertible.”
The class Sowter runs in requires that most of the major components—apart from the usual racing safety equipment, such as seat, harness, fire extinguishers, and electrical cut-off switches—must remain stock, or be aftermarket equivalents of the original item. This includes the engine and gearbox, and Sowter was happy to discover that, after inspection, the F355’s existing 3.5-liter V8 and six-speed transaxle checked out fine. They were able to simply reinstall them, rather than having to rebuild them.
“As the original shock absorbers are no longer available, you can change them, but they have to be single-adjustable shocks like on the original Challenge car, no multi-adjustable shocks or remote reservoirs,” explains Sowter. “You can upgrade the brakes to Challenge specification or to a different manufacturer’s equivalent, as the original Brembos are no longer available. I’ve got AP brakes upgraded with race pads. There’s no big advantage in trying to upgrade the brakes because we have to run on treaded track day-type tires, no slicks allowed.”
Sowter runs Yokohama AO52 rubber, the most popular tire in the series, which publishes a list of approved tires. Original Ferrari Challenge OZ wheels are in very short supply, so Sowter uses either stock 360 wheels or aftermarket Braid wheels.
“We’ve got a Motec display, and, since we had to build a new wiring loom, we took the opportunity to build a custom loom to our own specification,” Sowter said. “We’ve incorporated buttons on the quick-release steering wheel which include functions from the control panel: indicators, pit lane speed limiter, different dash functions. These functions are doubled up on the control panel that sits beside me, so I’ve got a choice on which to use. I’ve also got a Tillett carbon-fiber race seat, which is nicely shaped; I find it very comfortable. A lot of race seats are flat-bottomed and not at all comfortable for me.”
Since the series mandates a minimum weight—in this case 1,340 kilograms, or 2,954 pounds—provision had to be made to carry lead weights securely under the floor on the passenger side. Additionally, the top three cars in each race are subject to a success ballast for the following race: 65 kg (143 lbs.) for first, 25 kg (55 lbs.) for second, and 10 kg (22 lbs.) for third.
Finally, the F355, which was originally red, was re-sprayed in brilliant white with a black carbon-fiber hood. It was time to head to the track.
THE FERRARI’S FIRST PROPER TEST WAS HELD at Brands Hatch in April 2023. Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan.
“It was an awful day, and, on a greasy wet track, I ended up having one of the biggest accidents I’ve ever had in a race car,” Sowter recalled. “I T-boned the Armco barrier, meaning that we had to do a second full strip and repair, and rebuild the car for a second time.”
Sowter decided to change the color scheme to reflect the new start, hence the silver/grey the Ferrari sports today. The rebuilt F355 returned to competition in July 2024 at Oulton Park, but then, at the same track in ’25, Sowter tangled with another car, resulting in some body damage. Are such repairs easy?
“As a road car, no, they are not easy to fix,” he replied. “It’s very hard to find original metal body panels. But, as a race car, we use replacement carbon-fiber panels that bolt on, so yes, they are relatively easy to replace. For major accident damage, the car has to go on a special jig to make sure it’s 100-percent straight and correct.”
So what’s the F355 like on track? And, since it’s a development of the 348 Sowter used to race, how does it compare?
“It’s absolutely lovely to drive,” Sowter said. “It’s such a leap forward from the 348. The 355 feels a lot smoother and its ‘on the limit’ handling has more feel. The 348 would suddenly bite you and snap into a spin, where the 355 seems to telegraph its feelings much better. It tells you what’s happening before the limit, and you can then drive up to the limit without fear of it suddenly snapping and pitching you into a spin.
“While the 355 is the next generation of car, it feels so much different on track that it almost feels like two generations forward rather than one,” he continued. “The 348 gearbox was cable-operated and the 355 is a rod setup, which gives a much more positive feel. The 355 gearbox is so much easier to use. I’ve retained the power steering, but that’s not a requirement. Some drivers don’t like power steering because it gives less feel, but I like it because it makes the car feel lighter, and it’s easier to drive.”
Sowter also noted the stock Ferrari transmission is geared for top speed, but that the car’s top speed isn’t relevant in this series.
“You’re not reaching 200 mph on a circuit,” he said. “It’s probably 140 mph on the quickest circuits, so generally you only use the first four gears, and occasionally fifth. You never get to the sort of speeds for sixth gear.”
While developing the F355, Sowter asked 2024 British Touring Car champion Jake Hill to drive the car.
“We were looking for improvements,” explained Sowter. “Bearing in mind the amount of racing Hill does, he drove it and his exact words were, ‘That’s the best balanced race car I’ve ever driven in my life, don’t change anything.’ And that was testing it at his home track, Brands Hatch, so it’s high praise, indeed.”
Many enthusiasts wonder about the cost of racing a Ferrari, assuming it must be cost-prohibitive. Sowter thinks otherwise.
“It’s a real misconception to think that it’s expensive to race a Ferrari,” he said. “The barrier to racing one is the cost of buying the car in the first place, but even then you can start with a 308 GT4 for under £50,000 (around $65,000). Once you’ve got the car, the running costs are very, very low; these cars are very, very reliable. In all the years of racing the 348, we had only one mechanical failure, which led to a gearbox re-build. Other than that, it needed two cambelt services and that’s it. Based on lots of experience in other series, the Ferrari series is by far the cheapest series we compete in.”
That’s not to say it’s always inexpensive. If an engine lets go, it would cost a fortune to re-build. Does that mean the Ferrari Club Classic drivers race soft-footed?
“Absolutely not,” replied Sowter. “Some younger people have entered the series thinking, ‘We’ll win this because it’s a load of wealthy old boys running around, playing with their Ferraris,’ but, in actual fact, there are some seriously quick people in a seriously competitive series. They race very, very hard, absolutely 100-percent.”
I can certainly vouch for that. As for Sowter, he plans to keep giving it his all.
“I’ve had a season and a half in it now, and have achieved several class wins but that overall win is still eluding us,” he says. “But I’ve come very close and will keep on trying.”
