2008 Silverstone Britcar 24hr

Paragon Porsche drivers Mark Sumpter/Andy Purdie/Adrian Slater won the Silverstone 24 Hours on September 20/21 after a magnificent fightback after problems early in the race. 

The trio of Porsche experts won by three laps after 24 hour gruelling hours of racing, but it was far from easy: driveshaft problems delayed the car during Saturday evening and a faulty wheel-bearing meant Five Ashes-based Sumpter had to nurse the car home over the final 90 minutes.    

The race began with a monster accident ahead of Mark, who had qualified fifth on the grid, but he skilfully threaded his way through the scattering pack to avoid major damage. “It was unbelievable,” he said afterwards. “With 24 hours to go, I wasn’t expecting to be on the grass avoiding spinning cars.” The Porsche 911 GT3-RSR glanced off the barriers but escaped with little damage and was fourth at the end of the opening hour. By the third hour of the race, the car was in the lead, no mean effort given that the team only acquired the car three weeks before the race and it was expected to do shorter stints than its opposition.  “The car has a relatively small fuel tank,” explained Sumpter. “We had to balance the outright speed of the car with fuel economy. We were also checking the wheel nuts with a torque wrench and that was costing us around 20 seconds per pit stop, so to lead, as we did, for four hours was really positive.”  But during Saturday evening, the car, formerly used in the American Le Mans Series, hit trouble. The car needed a new driveshaft and a lengthy pit stop ensued whilst the team had to take the car apart to get to the offending item.   From the lead, the car dropped to 23rd place, losing 23 laps in the process. Stunning work by the Paragon mechanics was then matched by some superb stints behind the wheel as Mark, Adrian and Andy urged the car up the order. 

  As dawn broke, the car was back in the top ten, by mid-morning it was in the top six and was flying. The race-leading Marcos Mantis failed with a seized engine allowing Andrew Howard’s Aston Martin N24 to inherit the lead, but Andy Purdie (Maidstone) had put the Paragon Porsche in contention. With Mark Sumpter back at the wheel, he was catching the Aston Martin at an extraordinary rate, taking 16 seconds per lap out of the Aston, and charged past on lap 461. With six hours to go, the car was in the lead and pulling away from the opposition, suggesting that it was hard to beat. 

   But in the last two hours came more drama. “The car had always had noisy transmission,” explained Sumpter, “but then a wheel-bearing started to play up. We had five laps in hand so we took the opportunity to do a long pit stop and see what we could do about it. It was going to be too long a job to change it so we needed to look after the car.”  Solihull’s Adrian Slater was ready to take the car over for the last stint, but as Mark had been driving for the previous hour, he was the ideal man to stay behind the wheel, as he knew exactly what the car felt like and how to treat it. Mark dropped the car’s pace, the Paragon engineers working out at what pace they could still win without overly stressing the car. 

   For the final 60 minutes, all eyes were trained on the white Porsche, everyone monitoring its lap times, the pit crew barely daring to look away from the timing monitors for fear of the problem becoming worse. With the tension palpable in the Paragon pit garage, Mark continued on the track, never stressing the car and bringing it home for a memorable win.  “We had come so close, we weren’t going to lose the win so near the end,” said Mark.   Lapping at 10 seconds off the car’s best pace was the ideal solution and the Porsche came home victorious, notching up a record 603 laps in Silverstone’s 24 hour race.  The winning margin was three laps and it was a mixture of delight and relief that was felt by the drivers on the podium. “To win a 24 hour race is an amazing feeling,” said Mark.

 “To do it in the way we did, with all the work by the mechanics and our fightback from being 23 laps down, makes it really special. I just can’t believe it – we’ve only had the car for three weeks and here we are as winners. Andy and Adrian both did a great job and this has been a real team effort.