After a great start for Porsche in the 2019 24 Hours of Daytona, heavy rain, 17 full course cautions and a collision forced the pole-sitting RSR back down the field to eventually be classified fifth overall. The sister car qualified fifth on the grid and enjoyed an eventful race. It was eventually classified third overall.
Porsche put great effort into Daytona, finishing the 911 and 912 machines in a great Brumos livery and piling drivers into the GT Daytona class in the new 911 GT3R. Nick Tandy took the pole in an RSR set up for dry running at top speed on the straights, and he and co-drivers Pilet and Fred Mako held the lead well into the night. When heavy rain moved in, the car was outpaced and started to struggle.
The sister car of Earl Bamber, new dad Laurens Vanthoor and Mathieu Jaminet lost four laps repairing a splitter mounting defect early on but made up places as the race progressed to finish fourth overall. A fuel stop penalty for the third placed GT40 of Richard Westbrook, Ryan Briscoe and Scott Dixon saw them demoted to fourth, putting Porsche up to third.
Westbrook and F1 retiree, Fernando Alonso, both described the conditions towards the end of the the race as “ridiculous”, with Westbrook describing the rain as the worst he had ever seen in racing. Alonso along with team mates Kamui Kobayashi, Jordan Taylor and Renger van der Zande eventually came home first overall, but Alonso had been calling for a safety car or a red flag while running in second, as cars drove with close to zero visibility at more than 200 mph.
“I called a lot of times when I was second, over the radio, that the safety car was necessary,” Alonso told Sportscar 365. “I think the last five or seven laps were not right for anyone on track. The visibility was nearly zero. We could not be flat out on the straights. The cars… were coming in sixth gear at 200 mph. There were parts of different cars at different points of the track because people were losing the bodywork here and there.”
“To achieve a podium result under such difficult conditions is a great effort,” said Steffen Höllwarth, Porsche IMSA Program Manager. “We led the field over long stretches, we coped impressively with a setback for the 912 car and we regained lost time. Now we’re looking ahead with optimism to the next race in Sebring. We are keen to repeat our victory there from last year.”
Getting back into the blog flow for 2019 was not helped by the failure of my much-loved Macbook Pro last week. If you know someone who can pull email folders from an encrypted SSD with a damaged operating system, drop me a line. Apple’s Support team say it can’t be done but a local data recovery place managed to get 300GB of data off the drive this morning. Sadly no email folders as yet, but some clever person must exist who can do this.
Anyway, while I was off-blog waiting for a new Macbook Pro to arrive, we had some notable Porsche sales with lots of interesting data: more of this later. One sale in Phoenix, Arizona set a new world record for the 2010 Porsche 997 Sport Classic, when RM Sotheby’s relieved a lucky buyer of half a million pounds ($654,000) for the privilege of owning a 150-mile example.
Half a million pounds for a Sport Classic will leave a lot of people scratching their heads. Yes it is rare, and this was low mileage, and prices at the first Porsche sales of the year are often a little bit barmy, but that sort of money buys a lot of Porsche alternatives that can be driven. Odds are this purchase was to bolster an already substantial collection.
What is a Sport Classic?
First shown at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Porsche 911 Sport Classic was one of several limited edition models built on the Gen 2 997 platform (Speedster being another). An upgraded 3.8-litre engine with Power Kit equipped the car with over 400 horsepower to offer to the road gods through a six-speed manual transmission. The 250-unit Sport Classic edition also featured Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes and PASM as standard.
Several styling features set the Sport Classic apart. These included a Double-Dome roof, a ducktail engine cover and that evergreen Sport Classic Grey paint. The wheels were replica Fuchs (cast in a factory in Italy if memory serves). The Fuchs people told me that they were a bit ticked off that genuine forged Fuchs alloy wheels were not part of the recipe for maximum Sport Classic authenticity and that it was all down to price.
I was not that enthralled by the Sport Classic when it first came out and didn’t chase a test drive. The closest I ever got to driving one was in a feature on a replica that myself and Alisdair Cusick were commissioned to write for a 911 magazine sometime in 2010. Built by a Porsche place in Essex, the conversion was based on a well used Gen 1 997 C2, so not the widebody shell that the real one was built around. Thus the Sport Classic wheels (bought from Porsche) did not quite fit the arches properly and the bubble roof was a bit of a challenge. It had the right look side-on from a hundred feet away, but each step closer made it slightly less convincing, until you were standing next to it and looking through the window at tired leather and a Tiptronic shifter.
However wide of the mark that replica was, at least the owner drove it for a few thousand miles, which is more than the owner of the nigh-on brand new Sport Classic sold by RM Sotheby’s did. With just 150 miles on the clock, the car had been stored in California all of its life, so was offered in pristine condition. It sold for $654,000 including premium: a figure which made at least three people very happy. If you were thinking you might fancy a Sport Classic some time, you are probably not one of the three.
Porsche has released the first pictures of the new Porsche 911 Cabriolet (992 model). The new model’s power hood can be operated at speeds up to 30mph and completes its closed to open cycle in twelve seconds. It also comes with an electric windjammer. All good for hairdressers.
Except the 911 Cabriolet is not a so-called ‘hairdresser’s car’. I had a 911 Cabriolet and would have another in a heartbeat. I did track days and long tours in mine and treasure memories of spirited drives on warm summer nights. Commuting was cool in the Cabriolet, although really hot days kept the roof up. Soft tops can be counter intuitive.
The new Porsche 911 Cabriolet offers optional sports suspension for the very first time: a benefit of the improved torsional stiffness from a new mounting position for the engine in all 992s. C2S Cabs have been widened so they share the same body width as the C4S versions. Both models have the sexy rear light bar and all panels bar the bumpers are made of aluminium.
The new Porsche 992 Cabriolet is a good looking car, available to order now priced at £103k for the C2S and £108k for the C4S. But which to buy? Fantasy buyers lean toward 2wd 911s, but the 911 Cabriolet has never been a lightweight, so the performance difference from 2wd to 4wd is negligible: a 2mph slower top speed from C2 to C4.
The modest premium has been a small price to pay for C4 surefootedness with the curvy wider body up to now. I would certainly be a C4S buyer at a £5k premium if a new cabriolet was within my grasp. Stuttgart’s decision to widen the C2S Cabriolet and give both models the C4S bodywork should shift the sales balance and strengthen residuals for the new Porsche 911 Carrera 2S Cabriolet.
It is not easy to find out the UK sales split from Coupe to Cabriolet models. Registration data is also unhelpful. Howmanyleft shows a falling number of Carrera 4 Cabriolets (160 in 2001 to 121 in 2018) to a lower rate of attrition for 2wd models (74 in 2001 then up and down to 68 today), which seems to support the common belief that more C4 models (Coupe or Cab) are exported or broken for spares versus C2 models.
The used market views two-wheel drive 911s as the more desirable, but the only obvious data falls well short of my best guess of total 911 Cabriolets on the road, so many later cars are likely registered as Porsche 911s rather than 911 Cabriolets. This makes it difficult to know where the line is.
With the 911 C2S Cabriolet (£102,755) priced roughly £10k more than the C2S PDK Coupe (£93,110), the Cabriolet looks set to remain a supporting derivative in the UK, but it’s still my favourite everyday 911.
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A quick surf through eBay last night showed some cheap classic Porsches for sale including this 1984 Porsche 911 Turbo (930) for under £50k at £47,500. There were several more expensive cars, and dearer ones often make more sense based on the cost to professionally restore rough examples, but if you’re a DIY restorer looking for an apparently complete example to play with, this one may be worth a look.
While there is no real detail in the ad other than it is an American import of an originally German-market Porsche 930 from January 1984, and some of the pics show it needs cosmetic assistance at the very least, it seems a complete car in running order with an MOT, the correct Recaro sports seats and all the right bits apparently intact.
Porsche 930 asking prices soared well over the £100k mark for cars like this in good condition during the market boom of 2012-2015, but they have eased in recent years. Of course, a spotless and unrestored 930 in original condition still commands serious money and is a wonderful thing, but the perception that a 4-speed 3.3-litre 930 in honest condition should command a price equivalent to several similarly well preserved standard 911s of the same vintage was a bit of a worry at the time. It’s good to see prices edging back towards reality and keeping these cars accessible for people to use and enjoy.
Having driven many standard and modified 930s over the years, I lean towards the upgraded cars, as a modern turbocharger, new CDI box and updated fuel injection with the right changes to the chassis and running gear bring the car to life. That said, getting a 930 or later 964 Turbo running properly is really the key to maximum enjoyment, so it is critical to get these cars to a K-Jet expert.
Only those with a detailed knowledge of this system who have the specialist equipment required to properly diagnose K-Jet injection should adjust the system on a 930 or 911 SC of the period, where the running condition is critical to avoid engine issues. I don’t work for JZM Porsche, but, if K-Jet was a concern, I would send my car to Steve McHale at JZM. Steve’s expertise on K-Jet systems and the workshop diagnostics going back to the early days of Bosch injection is second to none.
Anyone looking for a spotless 930 with mega provenance to cherish for posterity is not going to be interested in something like this. But, at under £50k and assuming the shell is not a disaster, this Porsche 911 Turbo for sale on eBay could be the base for something special without paying silly premiums for a car you ultimately want to chop and change.
The price, LHD and current GBP exchange rates may make this attractive to European buyers, but we will see how long the ad lasts before coming down. The ad text is below – I have nothing whatsoever to do with this other than it popped up on my radar and was worth a mention. The car is in Preston, UK.
1984 Porsche 911 930 Turbo for sale
Guards Red with black leather. Electric windows, sunroof. Registered January 1984. US import originally built to German spec. MOT until September 2019. US CarFax report available. Porsche spec printout available. Very solid car which requires some cosmetic attention. Trade Sale.
Last year’s Porsche Carrera Cup GB championship experienced the biggest format changes since the series began in 2003. Chief amongst these changes was the introduction of reverse grids.
How reverse grids work in Carrera Cup GB
Porsche Carrera Cup GB weekends are run as part of the support package for British Touring Car Championship rounds. Drivers are split into three categories based on pace and experience: Pro, Pro-Am and Am. There is an additional Rookie class for drivers new to the series. Reverse grids affect the Pro category.
There are two races in each Carrera Cup GB weekend. The start order for race 1 is set by the qualifying times: fastest man starts from pole. However, the start order for race 2 is determined by a combination of the finish order of the first race and a ball picked at random on the race 1 podium.
The podium balls are numbered 4, 5 and 6. The number selected dictates how many of the leading pack will have their grid positions reversed for the start of race 2.
The first race of the 2018 season was held on the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in early April. The weather was wet, making conditions interesting for the drivers, including the sole non-Brit, Cypriot Tio Ellinas, who started the season with Slidesports Engineering/DVF Racing. Ellinas qualified fourth overall, behind polesitter, Dino Zamparelli. As a mark of just how tight this series is, the top fourteen cars were separated by less than one second.
Ellinas passed George Gamble and Lewis Plato in the race to come home second overall. So the top six finishing order for race 1 was Zamparelli, Ellinas, Plato, Gamble, Orton, Wrigley. Three of the top six positions were claimed by cars from Joe Tandy Racing.
On the podium, Zamparelli chose the number 5 ball, which reversed the order of the top 5 race 1 finishers for the race 2 grid, giving a start order of Orton, Gamble, Plato, Ellinas, Zamparelli and Wrigley. Ellinas again made it from fourth to second just ahead of Zamparelli at the chequered flag. Zamparelli came away from round 1 as series leader with Joe Tandy Racing leading the teams.
Porsche Carrera Cup GB 2018 results
After one of the tightest championships in recent history, it was Ellinas who emerged as 2018 Porsche Carrera Cup GB champion. The Cypriot won only one race, but finished every race of the season in the points and claimed podiums in 13 out of 16 races. Joe Tandy Racing took the team championship.
Carrera Cup GB changes in 2019
For 2019, the reverse grids stay but there is a further refinement to the grid system to allow race 1 non-finishers to start behind the last finisher in their category, as opposed to starting at the back of the grid. Fastest race lap earns a point for the drivers in each category.
Carrera Cup GB prize money and bonus Porsches
Teams and drivers compete for a prize fund totalling almost £350,000 through the season, with additional prizes for the winningest teams. The series champion wins £40,000, with the top rookie coming away with £35,000. Points are weighted in favour of the race 1 result (winner gets 12 vs 10 points) and the prize money is weighted in a similar way. A win in race 1 nets £1700, while a win in race 2 earns £1300.
Winning drivers in each category get the use of a Porsche for a year, while the team champions get the use of a Cayenne for a year. This will help them get to the events spread all across the UK with an additional race weekend on Europe. Last year’s European round was held at Le Mans, while the 2019 euro road trip will be to Spa or Monza, sometime in May.
It is interesting that the drivers and team managers are required to pass an online test at the start of each season, and drivers are selected at random to do more tests throughout the year. There is also random breathalyser testing through the year, with zero tolerance enforced. More of my motorcycle touring pals have been reporting early morning random roadside breath testing in effect across Europe also: a good thing, in my opinion.
Mobil 1 The Grid did a nice piece on Nick Tandy’s work to keep Joe Tandy Racing at the sharp end of the grid in Carrera Cup GB including interviews with Nick, Tio Ellinas and Lewis Plato (no relation to Jason). Watch that below:
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