Hampton Downs endurance race: V.I.P. Petfoods team leads Porsche trifecta

With the morning fog finally lifting, Klark Quinn leads the way at the delayed start

AUGUST 13, 2011.  V.I.P. Petfoods Racing has led a Porsche clean-sweep of the 9-1/2-hour endurance race at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park in New Zealand.

What was originally intended to be a 12-hour race lost a fifth of its duration after early-morning fog blanketed the 2.8km North Island circuit. When the event finally got underway at 9.30am, two and a half hours after the scheduled start time, Australians Klark and Tony Quinn and New Zealander Stefan Webling dominated proceedings in the V.I.P. Petfoods 997 RSR.

The trans-Tasman team started from pole position, and led all but three of the 471 laps. When Tony Quinn crossed the finish line at 7pm, he had a 29-lap lead over the second-placed 997 GT3 of Australians Malcolm and Brett Niall and Clint Harvey.

Completing a trifecta for the German manufacturer were New Zealanders Denis Roderick, David Glasson and Aaron Harris in their 996 TT.

Fellow Kiwis and second-fastest qualifiers Andre Heimgartner and Phillip Hood took the lead on lap five in their 996 TT, but their joy was short-lived. Klark Quinn retook the position three laps later, and the V.I.P. Petfoods car was never headed thereafter.

Heimgartner and Hood dropped steadily down the order and finished ninth, 199 laps in arrears.

Afterwards, Klark Quinn was impressed by the RSR’s performance throughout the race. “We hadn’t raced that car since the 2009 Nurburgring 24-hour, but it ran faultlessly all day,” he said. “It’s such a cool car to drive – I’d forgotten what awesome traction it has!”

Klark conceded that he sacrificed the lead in the opening laps rather than take unnecessary risks. “The track was still damp in places at the start, and the last thing I wanted to do in such a long race was push too hard early on. It was better to let the other car through, because if I’d tried to defend the lead I could have made a mistake that could have put the V.I.P. Petfoods team out of the race.

“The track was drying, and I knew that I could get back in front without jeopardising our race plan. The most important thing in endurance driving is to get into a rhythm, and I was concentrating on lapping within a second of the target time,” Klark said.

The winning V.I.P. Petfoods car:
*  covered a total of 1318.8km at an average speed of 138.5km/h;
*  made six scheduled pit stops at approximately 70-lap intervals;
*  consumed four sets of tyres; and
*  had four driver changes (Klark Quinn had one single and one double-stint; Stefan Webling had one
double-stint, and Tony Quinn had two single stints).

Headlights ablaze, the V.I.P. Petfoods Porsche puts another lap on a wild winged Honda Civic.

RESULTS
1.  Klark Quinn/Tony Quinn/Stefan Webling (Porsche 997 RSR)        471 laps
2.  Malcolm Niall/Brett Niall/Clint Harvey (Porsche 997 GT3)              442 laps
3.  Denis Roderick/David Glasson/Aaron Harris (Porsche 996 TT)   436 laps

Fastest lap: Klark Quinn, 1min. 05.472sec. (153.959km/h) on lap 325

Hampton Downs Motorsport Park (2.8km)

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