Brit Car Silverstone 24 Hour 09/09/2007

Paragon takes 24-hour victory at Silverstone

Sussex-based Paragon Porsche scored a magnificent victory in the most demanding race of the season in Britain, the Silverstone 24 Hours, when a four-man driver squad took the team's Porsche 911GT3 to GTC victory and third place overall.

The round-the-clock race is unique in British motor racing and represents the ultimate racing challenge, as teams battle to keep sports and GT cars racing for 24 hours.  

The Paragon team of drivers was Mark Sumpter, Andy Purdie, Adrian Slater and journalist Chris Harris, and they all turned in superb performances to keep the car running at a fast but safe pace all through Saturday and right up to the finish at 4.30pm on Sunday.  

The car ran with incredible reliability, testament to the preparation work done by the Paragon engineers before and during the race. Amazingly, the team needed only to change tyres and re-fuel the car at the routine pit-stops, which came after an hour and a half.  "It sounds too good to be true," said Sumpter. "But the whole thing could not have been better. The car just ran like clockwork and we hardly needed to touch it. All we've got is a couple of stone chips in the windscreen!"  

Apart from tyres and fuel, they only changed the front brake pads at 12 hours and the rear pads at 18 hours. "There was literally nothing for us to do on the car," said Sumpter. "It was our 24-hour first race as a Paragon team and it was unbelievable. I'm thrilled to bits with the result."  

However, they had to work hard to make certain of victory as into the final two hours they were under attack from a German-entered BMW. "They were catching us, so we really had to push hard and respond," said Sumpter. "We had to send them a message that we could up our pace if we needed to and it played out beautifully."