Aston Martin's new production based racer ?

We've all known about the Aston Martin Vantage GT12 (Nee GT3) for many months now, from the initial renders realised over the New Year through to its glitzy official unveiling at the Geneva Motor Show in early March alongside its even bigger brother the "Vulcan'.

What we all probably didn't expect was for Aston Martin to take what is effectively a road car turned race car turned road car back into a race car but that is exactly what the Aston Martin's engineers at Gaydon have done. They then went and entered the car into one of the two rounds of the toughest race series around, the VLN including the toughest of them all - the Nurburgring 24Hr.

A single development car was entered into VLN1 by the factory back in early March. This weekend however saw two such GT12 'prototypes' (as some members of the factory fraternity refer back to its as) appear on the entry list under the name of the Aston Martin Test Centre to 'test' at the VLN2 alongside Aston Martin Racing's two full GT3 Vantage's, one of which was disguised to look like the GT12!

We do not know exactly how far this project will go, the only indications that we have from Aston Martin is that the cars are due to compete at VLN1, VLN2 and then at the N24 after which further decisions shall be made. Early indications must be good with the #144 car finishing in P58 despite the abysmal weather!

We will have to wait and see but in the meantime here are a few shots of the beasts at work at the Ring.













Photo credits - Social Media / VLN