Victory in the 2 Litre Cup at the Dix Mille Tours

Peter Auto’s season opening “Dix Mille Tours” Event should had taken place over the first weekend of April, held at the colourful “Circuit Paul Ricard” in Provence. Postponed until the 24th – 26th of July, Harvey has since returned from an excellent weekend racing.

The postponement meant the event featured as the first major international historic race meeting of 2020 and the expected mild early April weather had been replaced with scorching 30+ Degree mid-summer heat! providing a challenge for both drivers and teams. Whilst DK’s involvement in the event had been reduced somewhat owing to the complications this year has so far brought us; DK’s Harvey Stanley was in attendance taking part in the very competitive “2 Litre Cup” race for pre-1966 2 Litre Porsche 911s.

Owing to some issues in first practice, Harvey and the car’s owner Richard Cook, had enjoyed virtually no running before Saturday evenings qualifying. 2019 BTCC independent champion Rory Butcher put William Paul’s 911 in pole position. Closely followed by Olly Bryant in the Historika entry, further rounding out the top five were Joe Twyman (with Simon Evans), Pascal Pandelar (in David Clark’s car) and the Belgian Phillipe de Craene. Harvey set the 6th fastest lap of the day just a few tenths behind the fellow Tuthill car of de Craene.

The organisers did a fantastic job in putting on a wonderful event without too much disruption from the inevitable change in regulations and the weekend had flown by before the start of the 2 Litre Cup race on Sunday afternoon.

Due to a change in the regulations from 2019 Richard took the start from 9th Position in the Dolphin grey 901 and Harvey was to drive the second stint. A fantastic start from Richard saw him climb from 9th to 6th by the opening of the pitstop window just 35 minutes into the 90 minute race. Lapping on the pace of the leaders the team decided to delay the pit stop till as late as possible in the hope of a safety car intervention, that safety car came at the very end of the window and following the driver change Harvey re-joined the race in 4th position. The safety car pulled in with 20 minutes remaining, which released Harvey to overtake Simon Evans, Christian Coll and finally Phillipe De Craene to take victory by 15 seconds and take the 3rd fastest lap of the race, beaten in the lap time stakes only by Rory Butcher and Oliver Bryant.