Tuthill Porsche scored its tightest-ever victory this weekend, when Belgian Historic Rally Championship leader, Glenn Janssens, beat his closest rival by just two-tenths of a second in the Flanders Rally.
Based around the town of Roeselare in northern Belgium, the Flanders Historic Rally calls for a blend of torquey engines, high speed stability and driver concentration. Rally drivers race across ‘Flemish Tarmac’, so-called because of dirt dragged back onto the course by crews who survive an excursion through one of the many treacherous ditches.
Flanders is also a round of the British Historic Rally championship. This piled pressure on Team Tuthill, with a strong contingent of UK Porsche racers crossing the Channel to compete. Team boss Richard Tuthill was acutely aware of the stakes.
“As part of both British and Belgian historic rally championships, Flanders is a crucial event for our team: drivers and technicians alike. Everyone rose to the challenge and responded with peak performance. It was a real A-game weekend.
“Tuthill Porsche can supply the best cars possible, but it’s up to the drivers to make these Porsches work. After a minor off early in the rally, Glenn Janssens erased all distractions and focused on Saturday’s twelve fast stages, to take a class win and second overall. Beating his closest title rival by just two tenths of a second is testimony to Glenn’s terrific talent and hunger for the number one!
“Dessie Nutt has won here before, but each event is different. The car, the crowds, the weather and the roads change every year, so repeating past wins is never a given. Victory in Category One shows Dessie’s focus as season end approaches. That brilliant yellow Porsche is the perfect platform to show his spark is strong as ever.
“A well-earned class win for Peter Lythell in his 3.0-litre Tuthill Porsche could be seen as three times lucky for Tuthill in Belgium, but you make your own luck. Quick, reliable Porsches and fast, smooth drivers are difficult combinations to beat. Here’s to rounding off the year with a few more wins and adding to our trophy cabinet!”
Classic Porsche simpatico, Brendan Mullan is selling his recent barn find Porsche 911 on eBay. But this is no ordinary Porsche dragged out of a barn.
Chassis number 119200001 is the first ever long wheelbase Porsche 911 built in Stuttgart. Bolted together on June 28th, 1968, I was five months old when this 911 rolled out of Zuffenhausen and under the bums of Lamplough, McNally and Jo Siffert: Porsche test drivers at the time.
The eBay description is as good as you’d expect from the Porsche enthusiasts selling this car, and the provenance is solid. More solid than the chassis itself, but rust is nothing that can’t be repaired. You can switch it back from RHD to original left while you’re at it.
What will it fetch? Who knows, but I’ve already had one phone call discussing possible sale price. It’s currently sitting pretty at £35k with 8 days left to run. I doubt it will be cheap, but what’s cheap in an ever-rising market? Interest rates are close to zero: putting (a lot of) money into this will return better than that in time. And if it sells to someone with a factory restoration team to do the work, then all the better.
Today is the 2012 Spa F1 GP. I’m glued to the coverage on Sky Sports F1 HD with Twitter running on the iPad in the background. Today was also the penultimate round of this year’s Porsche Supercup.
F1 journo Adam Cooper tweeted this earlier: “Big shunt in Porsche Supercup with a car rolling on the way up the hill after Eau Rouge. But no safety car out”. Here’s some video of that incident.
The Team Bleekemolen car (below) was being driven by Jeroen Mul. Starting tenth on the grid, he gets a tap from the rear on the exit of Raidillon, which then sets off a chain of events leading to upside-down deceleration before the car rights itself, crosses the track and hits the barriers opposite. Not a small event!
I’ve done a lot of track days at Spa. Climbing up from Eau Rouge through Raidillon and on to the Kemmel Straight is one of the scariest parts of the track. You are absolutely flying here – sometimes almost literally – and every track day sees people destroying their cars. I remember one utterly destroyed F360 Spyder when they first came out: the owner frantically ripping the number plates off in the paddock after it was dragged back. If you can’t afford to wreck it, don’t take it on track at Spa.
Jeroen’s last tweet before this accident was “Good morning everyone! A beautiful day for a good race here in Spa. Watch the race live at 11.45 on Eurosport and Eurosport HD!” Mike Hedlund has since tweeted “First Supercup race in the books. Got my ass kicked but had fun! @Jeroen_Mul had a bad crash in front of me, but he is fine!” Team boss Sebastian Bleekemolen has tweeted the above picture of the damage, adding: “What a race! @Jeroen_Mul rolled over just in front of me. Scary! He’s ok, so that’s the only good thing.”
Porsche Supercup is flat-out drama. Next weekend is the last round at Monza- will update the championship table shortly.
The first thing we bobble hats want to know about any new Porsche is the weight. You can whack in tons of power but, if the weight is OTT, that power is soaked up just hauling it around.
The standard body 991 C2 tops the scales at 1380 kgs DIN curb weight. That is the basic car on a full tank with no options: no sunroof, small wheels etc. DIN also includes a spare wheel, but the spare wheel in a new 911 is a Triple-A card in your wallet.
There’s no tech datasheet for the C4 as yet. Porsche says it’s ‘up to 65 kilos lighter’, which I presume means the basic manual car in lightest guise is 65 kilos lighter than the 997 C4.
Sixty-five kilos is slightly heavier than Allan McNish, so a nice saving, but few people would run a ‘basic’ 991. With some weight added for the front diff, shafts and prop, a bit more wiring and another chunk for that sunroof, an average C4 should weigh circa 1530-ish kilos DIN. That’s not too shabby for what most air-cooled 911 guys would assume was much more of a luxo-barge (edit Dec 2012: in fact UK C4 weighs just 1430 kg DIN).
If you’re in the UK and fancy one of these, they launch at Christmas: just in time for skiing. You’ll need 77 grand for the C4 Coupe; ten more for the widebody. Add nine grand to either for a droptop, so £96k plus options for a C4S Cabriolet.
I dunno what extra options you will want, though. Standard equipment includes full leather, a colour touchscreen PCM with sat nav, auto climate, Bi-Xenons, Thatcham Cat 5 tracker and iPod hook up. Order it in Blue like this Cabriolet and job done.
Used 997 C4 GTS Coupes currently (August 2012) start at £68k in the franchised network for a year-old PDK Coupe with 4k miles. As a long-time used car values specialist, I suspect the arrival of the 991 C4S will have an effect on 997 C4 GTS residuals. Could be good news if you’re planning some GTS shopping in early 2013.
The 2012 Midnight Sun Rally starts today. Three days of flat-out action with the cream of Scandinavia is about to begin, and Tuthill Porsche is in the thick of it.
This running of the Midnight Sun is dedicated to the late Ove Andersson, so has attracted even more rally stars than usual. Toyota Team Historic has four-time World Champion, Juha Kankkunen (1986, 1987, 1991 and 1993), Hannu Mikkola (1983) and the brilliant Mikko Hirvonen, who is getting ever-closer to his first World Championship.
Team Tidö, led by David von Schinkel, has supplied the Tuthill-prepped cars for Björn Waldegård (1979), long-time Porsche hero Åke Andersson and Stig Blomqvist, the 1984 World Rally Champion.
“ It will be great fun to meet Kankkunen and Mikkola again,” said Björn. “These few days should be most enjoyable, and the rally will be very interesting to watch for the spectators.”
“With so many great names competing, the spectators will all be winners,” agreed Åke Andersson, celebrating fifty years in the Midnight Sun Rally. Åke came second in class on his 1962 debut, and his plan for this year is to chase the top honours. Given Ake’s Porsche CV, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be in the hunt!
I’ve got the batphone set for Sweden and am hoping to get regular news from this terrific event. If I wasn’t snowed under with other stuff to do, I’d be up there myself, enjoying the craic. Instead, I’m at a specialists tomorrow, sampling their full Hunter chassis set up and alignment rig (above) on my recently refurbed BMW M3 and then at Silverstone Classic all this weekend.
Mark and James from lightweight Porsche parts specialist, EB Motorsport, are racing in World Sportscar Masters at Silverstone, so we’ll be out there in force with the cameras, hoping for sun and tracking their Masters Historic title defence – going very well so far.
Remember our Ferdinand Facebook page is seeing plenty of energy at the minute, so follow that page for your regular Porsche news fix! I hope that time for regular Classic Porsche Blog action will return when we’ve got that operation up and running.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
