Porsche 996 GT3 Cup

We purchased at that time, a 1996 used racecar, which was driven successfully by Jamie Campbell-Walter (pictured right), a young and extremely talented driver who was destined for bigger and better things.

The team was at that time run by Colin Blower Motorsport who had been involved with Tuscan racing since its inception back in 1989. and having the best-prepared cars in the series. We had no fewer than 17 wins and 24 other podium finishes during the last few Tuscan seasons.

Hawthorns Motorsport is run by Rod Barrett who was Managing Director of Hawthorns but he has now retired from that role in order to run the group property company, Farnham Estates. The Hawthorns dealership continues however albeit in smaller premises, and under new management, It was in fact sold to Ex Sales Director Jonathan Sproule and to Rod's son in law Jason Smith who between them run the business from new showroom and workshop premises at Station Hill Farnham.

Our original star driver JCW moved to FIA GT in 1999 and became world champion FIA GT in 2000, having been awarded a top drive with the Lister works team. We are of course delighted to have played a significant roll in JCW's progression to the top echelons of motorsport.

In 2002 we ran 4 cars, Rod Barrett in 29, Jan Persson in 28, Jay Shepherd in 27 together with newcomer Steve Moore in car 26. Jay Shepherd was appointed as our number one driver and he proved beyond any doubt that he was worthy of his place. Jay took seven outright wins, four second places and four third positions and despite three dnf's finished the season as runner up in the Carlube 2003 TVR Tuscan Challenge, which is the highest position the team ever achieved.

Jay Shepherd receives the 2002 second place trophy

2003 saw Hawthorns Motorsport reverting to a two car team with Rod Barrett driving car 29 and Jan Persson in car 27. The occasional guest driver joined us for a race or two, Lawrence Tomlinson drove car 27 at Croft finishing in 5th and now runs his own team in British GT's, but in real terms, the team was run for the pure fun of it as we saw 2003 as the last proper season for the TVR Tuscan Challenge. TVR engineering Ltd , who owned and ran the Challenge seemed to be loosing interest in continuing the highly successful, but ageing series and Hawthorns Motorsport officially withdrew from racing TVR's at the end of the 2003 season.

2004 became a sabbatical year as both original drivers had pressing business commitments and decided to take the time to consider new ventures for 2005. However, TVR decided to keep the series running albeit on a much smaller basis but having sold all the cars during the first few months of the year, there seemed little point in becoming involved again, As luck would have it, the opportunity arose to buy back the 27 car, complete with a "paid for" engine lease at a very reasonable price, and this allowed the team to join in for the last 3 rounds of the series. The Tuscan Challenge was "officially" retired by TVR at the end of the 2004 season, much to the horror and dismay of it’s many fans and dedicated followers.

In 2005 Hawthorns Motorsport ran in British GT with a newly acquired car, a BMW Z3M Coupe run via the original preparation team, Colin Blower Motorsport but in June 05 the team transferred to the EERC Britcar series as the BMW was just not competitive in BGT. We also changed preparation teams to Moore Racing, already an established team in the TVRCC Challenge and Britcar. See www.moore-racing.com for full details. We made as many alterations that we reasonably could to the Z3M, but were still unable to find the pace needed to have any real chance of being competitive, we did however achieve several podium finishes but despite this, we knew that we needed to look for a more powerful car.

The 2006 season revolved around the British GT series The BMW Z3M Coupe GT was sold and the team concluded terms for the purchase of a 2004 Porsche 996 GT3 Cup car from the highly successful Motorbase Performance team based at Brands Hatch and run by team owner, Dave Bartrum. See: www.motorbaseperformance.co.uk Motorbase Performance therefore became the preparation and support team for Hawthorns Motorsport for the 2006 British GT season. The Porsche proved very competitive but so was the BGT series, we were up against some of the very best teams and drivers in the country and although we did gain a few very respectable finishes, as a small team, we were well below the budgets needed to make any real progress in such a high profile series. We could also see that as far as the "Cup" class was concerned, there would not be a place for us in the 2007 season as BGT was moving away from this class in order to concentrate on GT3

The 2007 season saw a return to the EERC Britcar series for the full championship, and a new preparation team, Neil Garner Performance Engineering, see; www.neilgarner.co.uk however, problems arose at the very beginning of the season and our start date was seriously delayed. Of the 8 rounds available, we could only compete in 5 starting in mid June at Spa. We finished the remaining races in the 07 season and managed to collect some silverware, 1st place in class at Castle Combe!! Plus a few podium finishes, remarkably, we finished 4th overall in class, and only a few points short of a championship podium finish.

2008 will see Hawthorns Motorsport again competing in the EERC Britcar series supported by it's preparation team, Neil garner Performance Engineering.