Brit Car Brands Hatch 04/05/2008

Porsche Racing

Sumpter and Slater race at A1GP meeting

Mark Sumpter and Adrian Slater raced in front of the bumper A1GP meeting crowd at Brands Hatch on 3/4 May when they tackled a pair of Britcar races in the Paragon Porsche-entered Porsche 911GT3RS.  

It was the first race weekend of the season for each driver and a rare chance to race on the daunting Grand Prix circuit at Brands Hatch as the circuit hosted the final round of the 2007/08 A1GP season for powerful single-seater racing cars.  

They raced the Porsche that Mark had previously campaigned in the FIA GT Championship with Mike Jordan in 2003, which is now back under the wing of Sussex-based Paragon Porsche. With plans to race the car in the Silverstone 24-Hour race in September, Mark and Adrian used the pair of 50-minute races at Brands as a season warm-up, and a chance to see how the opposition had developed over the winter. 

"We were planning to fit a more powerful engine before the 24-hour race," said Mark. "But the Brands races showed us how much Britcar has moved on and we realise we need to considerably upgrade our car before the 24-hour race."  They duly finished both races at Brands in seventh place, having moved up strongly as the races progressed. "We're fairly evenly matched as drivers and everything went very well; we had no problems at all," said Mark.   

In 2006, they had won both races at the corresponding event, so this was a clear indication that the pace and type of car now at the head of Britcar races has changed a great deal.

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