Test Drive: Porsche 911 GTS Cabriolet

Porsche has constantly improved their venerable 911 over decades of development and for many hardcore car enthusiasts; it’s the only sportscar that really matters. Porsche has also managed to offer a wide range of 911 models to their customers, from the base Carrera coupe to Cabriolet, Targa and all-wheel drive versions, which are all available with the flat-six engine in different states of tune. Porsche also mixes and matches these various iterations, with no less than 18 different 911 models currently available that range from around $82,000 to $172,000 in price and from 350 to 530 horsepower. This is not even considering the hardcore GT3 and GT2 models, which are in-between models and not officially available right now. There’s not a bad one in the bunch, but I grew particularly fond of the GTS version after driving it for a week.

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Rouge et Bleu

There can be no finer combination than GT racing and the South of France in July, so it was onward to the Circuit Paul Ricard at Le Castellet, near Marseille, for a weekend of FIA GT1 World Championship and FIA GT3 European championship action.

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Glorious Goodwood

Last July saw the 19th edition of what has become a sort of case study for motoring event organisers the world over: The Goodwood Festival of Speed. Attendance is capped to prevent overcrowding, admission is by advance-purchased ticket only, and the list of prestigious sponsors and partners looking to get their name associated with the event grows longer by the year. And it’s all down to the festival’s unique formula. Superstar cars and drivers, past and present, in an unusual but very appealing setting, all combined with the sort of relaxed and friendly atmosphere that’s not always found at a racetrack during a high-profile event.

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The Finest Pageantry

Stately homes and motorsport: two great British passions, and two things the British public seems to have an insatiable appetite for. So it’s only logical that these two domains have begun to overlap more and more in recent years. Lord March’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, held near Chichester in the far south-east of England since 1993, was the trail-blazer, but it now has a Northern rival in the form of the Cholmondeley (pronounced in oh-so-English fashion as ‘Chumley’) Pageant of Power.

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SCI Interview: Nissan's All-Rounders

UK-based Australian David Brabham has one of the most varied CVs of any racing driver active today. Over the course of a long and successful career, he has driven everything from Formula Ford and Formula 3 single-seaters to Brabham and Simtek Formula 1 cars, Jaguar XJR-14 and Toyota TS010 Group C cars, Panoz and Peugeot prototypes and a whole host of GT machinery. After a long spell racing primarily in the US, in 2011 he has returned to Europe to pilot a Nissan GT-R for the British Sumo Power team in the GT1 World Championship. Over at Sumo’s sister Nissan team JRM, meanwhile, we find Lucas Luhr, who has spent time in Porsche, Audi and Aston Martin prototypes; and Britain’s Richard Westbrook, who, after many years spent exclusively in Porsches, this year drives both a Nissan GT-R and a Chevrolet Corvette. SCI caught up with the three GT-R pilots at Silverstone recently to find out how their seasons are progressing and reflect on their interesting and diverse careers.

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SCI Interview: Bas Leinders

Up to a point, Belgian hotshoe Bas Leinders’ career followed a similar trajectory to that of many young European hopefuls: Early promise in the single-seater ranks, followed by a failure to break into a Formula 1 race drive as funds dried up. Since then, though, Leinders has carved out a name for himself as one of the most accomplished GT drivers in Europe, as well as taking on a management role with the Belgian Marc VDS team. In addition to piloting the outfit’s Ford GTs in the GT1 World Championship this year, he also joined compatriots Maxime Martin and Vanina Ickx (daughter of Jacky) in an ex-works Lola-Aston Martin AMR1 at Le Mans. At the Silverstone GT1 World Championship round, SCI spoke to Leinders about his various programmes and the future direction of GT racing in Europe…

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Beginnings And Endings

In 2010, the FIA GT1 World and GT3 European championships were the first series to use the redeveloped ‘Arena’ track layout at Silverstone. And this year, the teams, fans and media of these championships were the first to experience the dramatic ‘Wing’ building that houses the brand-new pit garages, hospitality suites and media centre. Of course, both of these ‘first looks’ served as dry runs for the British Formula 1 Grand Prix that followed several weeks afterward, and the occasional teething problem or unresolved detail did manifest itself at various points over the weekend. But the overriding sense is that Silverstone is firmly on the right track, and showing the flashy Asian and Middle Eastern venues that there’s life in motorsport’s ‘Old World’ yet. This is particularly important in light of the FIA’s recent on-again, off-again Bahrain Grand Prix debacle, but at Silverstone this year the main point of conversation was another FIA decision, which came to light mid-way through the weekend.

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SCI Interview: CGA Race Engineering

Running a historic racing car is not always the daunting challenge some imagine it to be. For ‘old’ can very often mean both ‘simple’ and ‘straightforward,’ and in many cases diagnosing problems and effecting repairs on a classic racing car can be quite easy for the experienced race mechanic. But we’ve now reached the stage where some pretty advanced and sophisticated machinery finds itself eligible for historic competition (witness the appearance of an Audi R8 at Sebring’s SVRA Endurance Classic this year), and this brings a new set of challenges for the historic racecar preparation specialists of the world.

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