James Appleby
David Appleby Engineering
James's interest in motorsport was inevitable as he was taken to rallies from a very early age.
As soon as he could walk he was racing his quad around the field. He went on to compete in the Nora National Youth Quad Championship in 2005.
As soon as he had passed his driving test he wanted to go rallying. He hired an MG ZR and competed on the Cornwall Rally finishing 17th overall in the National B section and 3rd in his class.
Looking for more power he had the opportunity to use a Subaru '98 car on the Azighmur Stages a rally that David sponsored. He finished 7th overall.
With the chance to move direction into racing, during 2008 he competed in the Seat Cupra Championship which ran as a support race to BTCC. This fuelled his enthusiasm for racing which saw his progression to Aston Martin Racing in 2010.
James was educated at West Buckland School, North Devon and after completing his A Levels, was offered the opportunity of a work placement at MCT (Ex Arrows Formula 1, TWR Company) as a Junior Design Engineer based at Leafield, Oxford, where he worked on the Superleague V12 Race engine and on the Mclaren MP4-12C Road Car Engine in its early stages.
In 2010 James and David drove together in the Aston Martin Challenge where they finished 2nd Overall. James had fastest laps, pole positions and at the end of the season was awarded the ‘Star of the Future’ Award by Aston Martin.
In 2011 James & his team mate Ant Scragg competed in the European GT4 championship under the Generation AMR banner, scoring good results, against a very competitive field. A win at Spa and the lap record in an Aston Martin GT4 certainly showed the pairing had the talent to compete against the most seasoned racers. James also combined this with graduating from the University of the West of England with a degree in Motorsport Engineering B Eng (Hons). James then started working at DAE while continuing to Instruct in race/performance cars around the country.
In 2014, James competed in the highly competitive British GT championship with gentleman driver Steve Tandy in the then brand new Bentley Continental GT3.
2015 saw James continued to instruct various clients in their road and race cars and has been very busy building the GT Simulators for Base Performance Simulators - installing them worldwide. James was also chosen to help develop Aston Martin’s new track only hyper car, named the ‘Vulcan’ before being of a very small group of experienced instructors to teach the lucky owners of the 1.8 million pound hyper car on how to handle its 820 bhp.
In 2016, James expanded the DAE business into the Aston Martin Road car servicing/tuning business and heading up the running of the Generation AMR SuperRacing No.44 Aston Martin GT4 car in British GT’s for James Holder & Matthew George
2017 saw James run the Generation AMR SuperRacing team across numerous races across Europe and the world, finishing the season with an overall GTX and GTX3 class win.
In 2018 Inivictus Games Racing was launched with DAE the racing team behind the name. James is the team principle and looks after day to day running of the team and logistics, James also carries out this role for the Generation AMR SuperRacing team as well as heading up the road car tuning/servicing side of DAE.
With the road car maintenance and tuning side ever expanding, DAE supplies a huge amount of OEM and aftermarket parts to customers and other independent specialists and this side of the business is headed up by James and is going from strength to strength.
James has now created a true Aston Martin One Stop Shop for all models of Aston Martin from 2005 onwards. DAE are world renowned for their Aston Martin servicing and upgrades and continue to build and expand on this each and every day.
James Appleby
David Appleby Engineering