Silverstone Variety Pack: Silverstone, Steller, Sims And Friends Reunited

A couple of meetings in the Silverstone area turned up plenty of interest.

First stop an absolutely packed Silverstone ‘Wing’ paddock with a mix of 750 Motor Club entrants ahead of their weekend’s race action significantly boosted by a large contingent of historic racers getting track time ahead of next weekend’s Silverstone Classic.

The first familiar faces are set to share a fabulous 1960s Ford Falcon, 2014 British GT Champion Marco Attard joined by now ex Formula E racer Alexander Sims, the ex Mahindra racing man rumoured to be heading for an Hypercar/ GTP race seat in 2023.

Sharing the same garage, but this time testing a Corvette Stingray was Sir Chris Hoy who also had a happy reunion with the occupants of the next garage, both human and mechanical with RJN Motorsport attending to an immaculate Nissan GTR Nismo GT3, post build the car was being shaken down by none other than Jann Mardenborough with ex Nissan Motorsport boss Darren Cox also in attendance. Apparently the first time since 2018 that the Welshman had driven a GT3 spec GTR!

The pair were tight-lipped about the reason for the car’s presence but did reveal that the GTR had been withdrawn from an initially planned outing in next week’s Masters Endurance legends races.

Reading between the lines it seems more than possible that the session is linked to a reportedly forthcoming feature film that could well be set to document and dramatise the journey of gamer turned factory racer Mardenborough.  Jann has been working for some time as a Sim driver for the Nissan Formula E team but is clearly pushing hard to return to a real, rather than virtual driving seat.

The GTR, apparently running near unrestricted at the test with c.700 bhp was close the the quickest car at the test, though it did have one strong contender for that ‘title’ a couple of garages away where another old friend of DSC was lodged.

Paul Cope featured regularly on those pages in the early days of DSC and in the latter days of our predecessor outlets.

As the owner of Pro Tran Paul campaigned Venturis (a 400 GTR and 600 LM), in British GT back in the day as well as an SR2 Debora in John Mangoletsi’s ISRS.

The car on parade at the test though was a more recent machine, the unique, Reynard-based Pro Tran RS06/H, an LMP1 car based on a Reynard 2KQ chassis and campaigned in 2006 in a part season of the Le Mans Series with Cope joined by the likes of Kevin McGaritty, Ben Collins and Phil Bennett.

The car was powered by a twin turbo AER V8 in period but now boasts a more reliable AER turbo four, Cope reactivated the car after more than a decade out of use, racing the car for a one-off at the Silverstone Classic last year and returning again for next weekend’s Silverstone festival, with hopes of further historic racing outings for the very original looking car, still featuring the cockpit side dailysportscar vinyls it carried when new.

That was the last car seen by the DSC Editor at Silverstone and, completely bizarrely, the next sportscar seen 20 minutes later was another Reynard, this time an earlier 01Q, and a car with quite a history, one of a pair campaigned with some success by Dick Barbour Racing in the ALMS (including the 2001 LMP675 class Championship), ELMS and at Le Mans, all as Judd V8-powered LMP675s.

After that the cars were bought by Fred Goddard, re-engineered with Nicholson McLaren V8s (plus a short period for one of the pair with a Judd V10) for service in 2003 in the FIA Sportscar Championship and with a run in the Le Mans Series ‘rehearsal’ in late 2003, the Le Mans 1000km on the Le Mans Bugatti circuit – Martin Short joining the team for his first top-class prototype race alongside Earl Goddard and Warren Carway.

The car is now for sale and displayed in the entrance area for British GT Championship GT4 front-runners Steller Motorsport.

A brief tour of the huge impressive Steller facility revealed that the team already had three Audi GT cars on strength with a pair of R8 LMS GT4 and the team’s now fully updated to Evo2 specification GT3 machine.

The team are investing significantly in the future including a high quality hospitality offer with an impressive unit that will see service again in the British GT Championship as Steller look to the future – an evaluation underway of race series options and conversations underway with potential future customers.

Before that though they are full steam ahead to take the fight to the field in the 2022 British GT Championship. The battle for the GT4 Championship is looking like one to watch!