6 Hours of Silverstone
July 21, 2008
Two hours of Silverstone, or so it was for the #66 Orion Aston Martin DBR9. Shawn Purdy and Chris Sommerfeld had high hopes going into the race, with successful practice tests showing a pace that was comparable to the best times seen in the race.
Shawn Purdy qualified the DBR9 3rd in GT, catching traffic on both flying laps. Starting the race, he fell back to 4th and getting ready to settle in when he clipped the back of Kevin Brents, which sent Purdy for a loop. Sitting on track to allow the field to go by unfortunately resulted in being T-boned, causing major damage to the car. Forced to pit, Purdy fell a lap down to the leaders after just 2 laps, and valiantly faught his way back through the field with a car sub-100%. Despite a damaged car, and what Purdy describes as just not driving good, he climbed into the top 10 in class with respectable lap times, his best being 1:42.248, before making his scheduled pit to hand the car off to Chris Sommerfeld.
All looked normal during the pitstop, with hopes the team could repair the car even more before sending Sommerfeld on his way, but unfortunatly as soon as Chris took over the car, the dreaded disco occured, and Sommerfeld had no throttle control and the car coasted to a hault ending the Orion Race Team's day. An unfortunate occurance on a day when championship rival and Orion's friend Wilfred Van Den Brink lead his team to victory, effectively wiping out Orion's comfortable lead in class. With both teams equal at 113 points, the next race will be pivotal before moving onto the season finale at the 24 Hrs of Le Mans. Talks are Frosty St Clair who did a fabulous job commentating the Silverstone 6 hours race, will be back in the drivers seat for the next race; stay tuned!
