After Chamberlain's retirement, it was the Malcolm Spendlove entered Porsche 997 Cup Car, driven by Laurence Bilton who took the win. A particularly commendable effort since it was the first time that he had driven it and the fact that it was Class 2 car, albeit only one year old!
In fact, there were at least 6 different Porsche types in the race and here are 3 of them. This was a great midfield tussle between Tim Bryan's 928GTS, Stephen Archer's 964RS and (obscured) the 968 (described as a 935 Replica not only in the programme but in the results sheets, so no-one told MST of the change) of Brian Robinson. Despite Stephen's comment before the race that he intended to put his main effort into the intermarque race (where his car sits more logically, I guess), there was no evidence of his lack of commitment in this one. Here he had attempted to go around the outside of both the others into Russell chicane, but had to back out to avoid hitting Bryan. In fact, he was trying so hard that later he threw it off at Coram, but still recovered to 6th. Tim Bryan, in the meantime went on to finish 5th, whilst Robinson was caught by the recovering Noble M12 GTO of Paul Cundy, to finish 8th:-
Alan Cosby finished 10th in his Ferrari 512M:-
2nd place fell to Mark Ticehurst's Porsche 935 (replica?). It's approach to the chicane was always entertaining, since when it was not chucking out this blue/brown mix of smoke, it was providing flames!:-
Witt Gamski laps the 993RS of Antony Oliver, on his way to 3rd in the Ferrari 360 Challenge. Oliver was 9th:-
The other two finishers were Paul Livesey, 4th in his 993 GT2 and Dave Stockton, 11th in his 944 Turbo.
All in all, not a bad start to this series, despite the loss of 6 cars over the day. As T600 has noted from Autosport, Archer is hoping that the next round will see a Lister Storm and an XJ220 out, and I did hear mention that at some stage Gerry's old Aston V8 might be out, hopefully in the hands of some-one like Michael Mallock. Then, of course, as Gregor has mentioned, there is Malcolm Hamilton's V12 E -type. So plenty of potential there - come on guys, bring these cars out!