A love affair broken up
A Yorkshireman he may be, but sportscar stalwart Tim Sugden is a big softie with a deep passion for motorsport. He fell in love with a car in which he enjoyed a lot of success over multiple seasons. That’s why he bought it – and why he still sheds a tear when he thinks of its ultimate fate.
Sugden raced Porsche 911 GT3-R – chassis number WP0ZZZ99ZYS692079 – every year between 2000 and ’05, starting out in the FIA GT Championship with the EMKA Racing team. He came close to the GTO title in British GTS in ’02, before notching up two impressive FIA GT class wins in ’03 at Enna and Anderstorp with Martin Short and Emmanuel Collard respectively. He also raced the car at the Le Mans 24 Hours in ’04 after its sale to Ian Khan and the death of EMKA boss Steve O’rourke.
“If it hadn’t had to be reshelled, I’d still have that car”
The following year, ‘Suggie’ ended up buying his old 911 GT3-R, which had undergone a series of updates, including the seam-welding of the shell, by Ricardo Engineering early in its life. He’d played a key role in the establishment of Kenny Chen’s Gruppem team, which was going to contest the Le Mans Endurance Series as well as running Porsche’s factory squad in FIA GTS.
“I bought it because we needed an extra car for the LMES and because it was a nice thing to have,” recalls Sugden. “I really wanted to own that car because of my history with it.”
The Porsche met its demise during a dank and miserable Silverstone 1000Km day-night race in an innocuous-looking accident at Luffield that still frustrates Sugden to this day. He was momentarily blinded by TV pictures being shown on a giant Starvision screen.
The chassis was irrevocably damaged, meaning the car had to be reshelled.
Porsche’s policy in such cases is to demand the return of the original shell for destruction for both reasons of safety and to prevent ‘ghost’ cars leaking onto the market.
That means that a Porsche 911 GT3-R, chassis number WP0ZZZ99ZYS692079, is out there, but as far as Sugden is concerned it’s not the car he came to love.
“If it hadn’t had to be reshelled, I’d still have that car today,” says Sugden. “It wasn’t the same car as far as I was concerned.”