Aston Martin Racing working on 2011 car

Aston Martin has revealed that work is already underway on its own LMP1 prototype for the 2011 Le Mans 24 hours.
Aston Martin Chairman David Richards confirmed last weekend that AMR had pushed the button on the much talked about project.
Work started in earnest during the summer on a successor to this year’s reworked Lola coupe, which competed in the 24 Hours and last weekend sealed the Le Mans Series title at Silverstone.

“We have had our design team working on it for two months “said Richards. “Most the initial CFD work has already been done we have brought good design people onboard and we have partnership with Formula 1 Teams.”
Aston Martin and AMR will develop their own engine to replace the six litre V12 that powered its coupes this season “we know what we think is the right thing to do is,”
Richards insisted that finance is already in place for AMR to produce its own car in the future.
“That’s no problem,” he said “We have sponsorship agreements”

Richards explained that AMR is in the process of putting together a three year plan for its motor sport activities. He said that it was important to “stop looking from year to year”.
“We have made no secret of the fact that we want to build a complete car ourselves, but we want to do it properly so we need a proper plan,” he said “That’s one of the reasons why we are looking at 2011.”

AMR had looked at building its own car for next season. It decided to focus on 2011 after the ACO revealed the 2010 Le Mans engine rules last month.
AMR team principle George Howard-Chappell said: “We are far enough down the line with the design that we could have done it for this year if the petrol/diesel equivalence had been sensible. Clearly this is not the case.”
Howard-Chappell explained that the first draft of the 2011 engine rules issued late last year is more favourable to petrol powered cars than those now firmed up for next year.
A plan on where AMR will race next year has yet to be decided. The best case scenario, according to Richard would be for AMR to sell its fleet of Lola-Aston Martins and focus on its new car. “We would like to see them in private hands, which would allow us to get on with developing our own 2011 car” he said “There is a lot of interest from people wanting to race our cars”
AMR Teams