Thanks to a few social media shares recently, it’s come to light that one of Porsche’s Le Mans prototypes was shunted at Goodwood Festival of Speed last weekend. Young Carrera Cup GB driver Daniel Harper was alledgedly at the wheel of a new-generation GT3 Cup race car on his timed drive up the hill when he crashed into the back of the #17 Porsche 962-resplendent in its familiar Rothmans colors. It’s a bit of a surprise that Goodwood has a history of publishing their dramatic crashes and incidents on YouTube, but has thus far not published the video of this incident, and a cursory view of their live-stream doesn’t seem to turn up the incident either. Perhaps because Porsche was the featured marque of the event, they were asked not to publicize this incident.
It’s difficult to lay the blame completely on Daniel’s shoulders as his goal for the run was to set an impressive time, and as such was running 10/10ths. The 962 was running a much slower pace up the hill on an exhibition run, according to the entry list driven by either Jochen Mass or Derek Bell, both legendary drivers. The incident shown in the video below happened after the checkered flag, which is at the top of a blind crest. Presumably, Daniel did not see the 962 running slowly ahead of him and crested the hill to a slow running Porsche that surprised him. By the time he hopped on the binders to slow down, it was already too late, the rear bump was inevitable. It’s unlikely that the flagging stations could have done anything to prevent the crash, either.
Here are some photos in an album from Daniel Harper’s motorsport-oriented Facebook fan page showing his weekend at Goodwood, including stints in the new GT3 Cup and the new GT2 RS Weissach. The young kid is a talented sports car racer, having placed well in Ginetta’s Junior program the last two years and joining Porsche Carrera Cup GB this year, also adding a few international rounds to his repertoire. He’s just under a month away from his 18th birthday, and this is a heck of a heavy thing to possibly have on his conscience at that age. Luckily, things are just things and can be repaired. Thus far there are no reports indicating that anyone was injured, and the incident appears to have been relatively minor.
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Then maybe put partial or total blame to the organizers for allowing 2 cars on the track at the same time....knowing the GT driver was running "for time"....and the 962 was more of an exhibition run, going slowly. Somewhat of an idiotic pairing and at that....poor planning as to sequencing (putting the slow car up front). Also...were the 962 brake lights functional? Altogether, what were they thinking as to how they staged the 2 cars ??????