Revamped Aston Martin Racing Team Eyes FIA Endurance Championship

By Brett Foote - August 21, 2019

Aston Martin Racing hopes slight tweaks to its endurance racing teams and Vantage GTE put them back in the pole position.

As recent as 2016 and 2017, Aston Martin Racing was at the top of the FIA World Endurance Championship world. Back then, AMR won both FIA WEC GTE Pro and Am titles, establishing itself as a dominant force in the world of endurance racing. Since then, things haven’t been quite as rosy. But Aston Martin did score a pair of GTE Pro class wins and a pole position at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, so things are beginning to look up. Now, a revamped team has its sights set on the upcoming Silverstone FIA race, which takes place on August 31.

“We are fully ready for the new FIA WEC season and we can look ahead to it with a measure of confidence given our form at the end of last season,” said John Gaw, Aston Martin Racing Managing Director. “We have changed the GTE Am line-up after a long period of stability and we expect this to produce results.”

“After 18 months of sustained development and improvement, which culminated in the Vantage GTE being a double-race winner and a pace-setter in qualifying at Le Mans, we are now ready to challenge for world championship titles again at the highest level of sportscar racing,” added David King, President of Aston Martin Racing.

Aston Martin has high hopes heading into its home turf thanks to a revamped driver lineup and a heavily revised Vantage GTE sporting a brand new livery and tires designed specifically for the car by Michelin. Last season marked the GTE’s debut, so AMR is hoping to take advantage of what they learned with various tweaks to the car. The GTE will also be making its class debut in the GTE Am with new drivers Paul Dalla Lana, Darren Turner, and Ross Gunn.

“I’m really looking forward to joining Paul and Ross in the #98 car and challenging for the 2019/20 GTE Am championship,” said three-time Le Mans class winner Turner. “It’s going to be very hard work and I think it is going to be the most competitive season in the category, with some very quick cars and some very strong line-ups. Paul is an extremely talented driver with a great deal of experience in the WEC and as a package we are very strong.”

Aston Martin’s GTE Pro class lineup, coming off an impressive year, remains unchanged for the coming season. That means Nicki Thiim and Marco Sørensen will return to their regular #95 ‘Dane Train’, while Alex Lynn and Maxime Martin will once again team up in the #97 Vantage GTE.

“We are coming in to Silverstone far better prepared and with a better package than last year,” said Martin. “It’s going to be a really tough fight with our rivals as they are really competitive, and as a team we will have to put everything together to be able to win and be at the front consistently. The target for everybody is to try and win the championship this year with the Vantage GTE.”

“The car is only one season old, added Thiim. “And because the season was so long, sometimes people forget that it has only done eight races! We are really proud of what it has achieved already. Now we want to attack the championship and I really want to bring it back to the ‘Dane Train’ along with Marco and the rest of the team.”

With a freshly tweaked car and a team consisting of both experienced and fresh exciting talent, Aston Martin appears well-poised for success this coming FIA season. Now, we’ll just have to wait and see how those efforts translate to the track.