GPR AMR: Team unveiled on the eve of the 2011 season

Wednesday, April 06, 2011



A mere few hours following the unveiling of the Aston Martin DBRS9 GT3’s livery at Aston Martin Antwerp Michiels, concessionaires of the historic make since more than 27 years, the GPR AMR team headed off for Circuit Zolder for the traditional Test-Day as a preamble of the Belcar Endurance Championship. A national competition which will kick off this coming weekend on the Zolder circuit, and a curtain raiser to the Belgian round of the FIA GT1 World Championship.

For the occasion the DBRS9 GPR AMR bearing the colours of Aston Martin Antwerp Michiels, HYT, Gulf and Creaset will be driven by the young Swiss Henri Moser (23 years), stemming from the World GT1 and FIA GT3 champion at the age of 19, together with the Belgian Michaël Schmetz, always present on the national scene. And for its first official race the GPR AMR clan does not lack ambition, eyeing an overall podium place.

"Over these last few weeks the entire GPR AMR team took full advantage of becoming acquainted with this Aston Martin DBRS9, Pino Sperlinga, the team manager explained. We dismantled and reassemble this car, and right from its first laps on the Zolder circuit it proved itself to be competitive, clocking up the 2nd best lap time by the end of the day. A pretty good omen." All the more so considering that the car presently does not have the 2011 evolutions fitted, contrary to this coming weekend, always on the Limburg located circuit. « We can expect improvements for the aerodynamics and brakes, Pino continued. Seeing we have two fast drivers I believe that we can count on a top 3 outcome to kick off the season. As we all know it boils down to a question of context, and I obviously can’t predict the conditions we will be facing during this initial round of 180 minutes. All the same I believe we can be reasonably optimistic taking into account the potential shown during the Test-Day…"

One week after the initial Belcar round this same Aston Martin DBRS9 GPR AMR will be competing in the highly awaited Blancpain Endurance Series, on the fast Monza circuit. And this time around the power beast will take on a Pro/Am configuration, with a team comprised out of the young and fast Ludovic Sougnez, who had also tested the car at Zolder last Thursday, and Eddy Renard, whilst a third driver still has to be officially confirmed.

On this occasion, GPR AMR, as the name states, is a Team, official Partner of Aston Martin Racing, and will be entering a second car, namely a Vantage GT4, which will be in the hands of the Italians Raffaele Sangiuolo and Giuseppe De Pasquale, two drivers emanating from the European GT4 Cup, and the Swiss driver Léonard Vernet.

Whilst waiting for this first international event, time to head off for Zolder, where the inaugural round of the Belcar Endurance Championship 2011 will take place on Sunday between 11.00 and 14.00hrs.
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