Clive Richards missed out on claiming the Autosport Caterham Eurocup crown despite winning the penultimate round of the series at Dijon, France.

Richards, from Itchingfield near Horsham, won the first of last Saturday's two races but had to settle for runner-up spot in the championship.

The Sussex driver did everything necessary of him in race one, hustling his Colards Motorsport-prepared Caterham R400 to victory by six-hundredths of a second from Hertfordshire racer Chris Cooper.

Going into the final round Richards, 42, needed to claim six more points than his title rival, Gloucestershire 24-year-old Nelson Rowe, but although he again led he had to settle for second place this time, right in the wheeltracks of Berkshire's Mark Humphrey.

Rowe finished third to beat Richards to the crown by just four points. It was Nelson's third consecutive Caterham championship victory.

Richards said: "It was great that the championship contenders were all there slugging it out on the final lap.

"It's been a great, competitive year and Nelson thoroughly deserves his championship win."

The ten-round Eurocup took the drivers to Germany for races at the Nurburgring and the Sachsenring, to the Zandvoort circuit in the Netherlands and to Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium.

Mark Sumpter and Mike Jordan scored an excellent sixth place in the Paragon Porsche-backed Porsche 911GT3RS during the eighth round of the FIA GT Championship at Oschersleben in Germany.

To complete a strong weekend for the team, the second Paragon-supported car of David and Godfrey Jones finished 11th.

After a series of dramas in previous races, the Paragon team arrived at the German track hopeful of a good weekend despite being in unfamiliar surroundings. For all of the drivers, the Oschersleben track was a new challenge.

The weekend started well in qualifying when the Sumpter/Jordan car posted eighth best time and the Jones car took 14th within the super-competitive N-GT category.

Sumpter, from Five Ashes in East Sussex, said: "The car was faultless in qualifying and we worked through the set-up, tuning the car to the circuit. In fact, both cars went right through the weekend without any problems."

The race on Sunday ran for three hours and the pace was fierce from the start as the Porsches and Ferraris battled for N-GT honours. Despite the level of international competition, Sumpter and Jordan were delighted to work through to sixth place after a great team effort.

Sumpter said: "All of the favourites in N-GT finished, so we didn't inherit any places at all. We split the pair of works-backed Porsches, one of them was in front of us and one was behind us.

"We did the best that we could have done and we picked up our pace all weekend. Everyone was really happy with the team's performance and the car was spot on all weekend."

The team will now switch its focus to the penultimate race of the season at the Estoril circuit in Portugal next weekend.