How it all began…
I started out delving into the world of motorsport at around 11 years old, initially racing in Ministox, which at 11 years old, was pretty good fun! By the age of 13 I had built my very own mini engine to race. It was very successful and I won my fair share of trophies and championships.
I started my first apprenticeship with A10 Performance Centre who specialised in Porsche and Ferraris… quite a world away from the mini engines I’d built over the last few years. The apprenticeship was awesome, working on Supercars at such a young age gave me an even greater thirst for horsepower!
I then moved to Perfect Touch Performance where I really started to learn the art of tuning an engine. From Nissan Skylines to Porsche 911’s I honed my skills and have become incredibly knowledgeable on the arts of tuning an engine properly.
The urge to ‘go it alone’ was too great and open my tuning garage, TR Racing, with my cousin and best friend Rob Gallagher. For many years we produced many high horsepowered engines for Nissan Skylines, Mitsubishi Evolutions, Supra’s and a wholo host of other manufacturers. Many exceeding the 1000 horsepower mark. We even held the European 4WD 1/4 mile record with a Nissan Skyline nicknamed ‘Gaijin’ (8.06seconds @176mph). Unfortunately, Rob died in a car accident back in 2009 and TR Racing closed its doors.
In late 2016 my daughter took to karting in her C50 Bambino era. I got the engine bug back after a long stint away from anything mechanical and this is how Tornado Kart Engines evolved!
Since Tornado have been building engines we have won many championships at club level, won MSUK British time trial championships with Harry Freeman in 2019, backed up with a 2nd place from Noah Baglin! This year (2021) Tornado Kart Engines driver Otis Cleary won the championship at SuperOne in the New Era class.
About Tornado
Tornado kart engines vision is to be the number one kart engine builder in the UK. We specialise in the Comer C50 Bambino and Honda GX160 Cadet engines.
We at Tornado Kart Engines have been in the racing scene for a couple of years dealing with kart racing engines, however the director of Tornado engines (Justin Sorial) has over 15 years of experience dealing with engine building from 1000BHP Nissan Skylines to everyday mechanics.
“As the director at Tornado engines I pride myself on always being very professional, whilst using my experience and knowledge to support my clients and young racers from start to finish in the competitive racing scene, Due to Tornado’s experience, I know the pitfalls and how to avoid them.”
Creating a Storm
We understand that with any client, the biggest issue with regards to finding your engine builder is TRUST. We take pride in retaining our reputation and providing you with the guarantee that we will give you 100% honesty that you can rely on.
Our industry is constantly changing. Constant changes mean that you need your kart engine to be current with any new rules and regulations to keep within the scope of the MSUK.
As an engine builder it is our duty to also keep ourselves up to speed with the forever changing guidelines. As we are based in London, we have been dealing with the local members of the tracks and building up our client base from word of mouth.
We have gone from strength to strength over the 2019 and 2020 seasons with more and more customers moving from their old engine tuners to us. Some move purely because of the results of their competitors on our Tornado engines!