Oxfordshire is at the heart of what has come to be called Motorsport Valley, an area of southern England and the Midlands with a high density of motor racing and supporting engineering firms.

The county boasts two Formula One teams in Williams at Grove and Lotus, formerly Renault, at Enstone, while the technical heart of the Virgin Racing team is based at Wirth Engineering in Bicester.

But while the UK dominates Formula One, its supporting firms stretch their expertise across the world at all levels of motorsport, with high levels of innovation from bespoke manufacturers who lead the field in niche markets.

Instrumentation specialist Stack, based in Bicester, is typical. With 18 staff split between engineering, sales and production, it is small but up to 80 per cent of its sales are made to more than 30 different countries, and exports grew by by 31 per cent last year.

Little wonder, then, that it scooped the Export Achievement title at the Motorsport Industry Awards.

Managing director Alan Rock said: “Motorpsort is a global market and that has become more significant recently.”

One of the reasons why companies such as Stack are prospering globally is precisely because they are in a specialist field, one which is of little interest to the Chinese, for example, who prefer to make cheap versions of mass-produced items with which to flood the market.

Another factor is that Stack is expanding into other areas such as aerospace, providing video recording equipment designed for use in harsh environments.

The cross-over between the aerospace and motorsport worlds is more obvious than you might think, with both requiring precision and reliability in the most challenging conditions.

Mr Rock explained: “A conventional video recorder would not last in such conditions but ours is solid state, completely sealed and can be controlled remotely.”

Such a design has meant that it has been used by NASA on space shuttles, meaning Stack has actually seen its products taken into space.

Back down to earth and a typical example of the levels of innovation and engineering produced by Stack lies with its tyre pressure monitoring system. Accurate tyre pressures are crucial in motorsport and can mean the difference between winning and losing, while they also contribute to safety as they can indicate problems, such as a slow puncture, long before the driver notices them.

The Stack system requires no separate battery, unlike conventional systems, and has no complicated sensor electronics, meaning that it is smaller, lighter and cheaper — all vital motorsport requirements.

Mr Rock said: “You can be as sophisticated as you want, but the thing that determines how fast a car goes around the track is the amount of grip the tyres will give. Tyre pressures are key to maximising grip.”

The lower cost of the system also means it has a much broader application at all levels of motorsport. Stack’s client list reads like a who’s who of the motoring and motorsport world.

It carried out data acquisition on the Bugatti Veyron super car, much feted by Jeremy Clarkson et al on Top Gear, while at the other end of the scale, the company has been involved in development with niche sports car manufacturer Caterham. Other big names include McLaren, Honda and Koenigsegg.

Stack was founded by Mr Rock and Trevor Tapping in 1983, who were both working for Bicester-based traffic control specialists Golden River.

They developed a chip onto which software information could be transferred and demand was such that, after a year, they had gone full-time.

Having worked with motor racing teams, they spotted a need for improvement in a long-established product — tachometers or rev counters which were not proving accurate enough for the demands of modern racing.

Their first tachometer was digital and far more accurate than anything that had been seen before.

That was the spur for an ongoing range of product development that continues to this day in the field of instrumentation and data logging.

In 2007 the company was bought out by American firm Auto Meter Products, but Messrs Rock and Tapping continued at the helm and the product range was extended.

Mr Rock said: “We had wanted to expand into the United States and the circuit track markets such as NASCAR.

“We started discussions with Auto Meter whereby we would manufacture and they would sell, and they liked us so much that they made an offer for the business, which we accepted.

“With the additional funding we are selling more products in the US, and we have more resources to increase our investment in new product development and, despite the recession, we have been growing ever since.”

A recent contract win has been with US industrial conglomerate Osh Kosh to to supply video recorders to airport rescue vehicles, and Stack has started supplying similar equipment to US police departments.

Mr Rock said: “Our stategy is to expand into other non-motorsport markets where our expertise and products will be appropriate.

“There is no shortage of opportunities.”