An inevitable consequence?

Yesterday's simple announcement from Aston Martin Racing that Partner team Young Driver AMR has elected not to compete in this weekend's forthcoming World Endurance Championship round at Shanghai International Circuit surely must surely come as no real surprise!

Citing the continuing poor Balance of Performance criteria being dealt to the V8 Vantage, the levels of performance expected by the teams commercial sponsors and the expectation that the car will again 'under perform' against that the Porsche's and Ferrari's equivalents, but whilst there maybe sanctions placed upon the team by the series for withdrawing a full season GTE Pro class car from the event Young Driver AMR has a difficult decision and chosen to not participate at the event.

As a fan of the team and of the series the prospect of having to travel half way around the world for a prospect of having a GTE Pro car finish behind that of a Porsche GTE Am car is not one worth relishing. As a commercial venture the question of financial/logistical outlay versus expected return is also negative

Hopefully this action from Young Driver will serve as a catalyst to wake the organising bodies of the corporate consequences to the constant 'meddling' and whilst any further action would be too late for the 2015 season a more consistent and level field could be established for 2016 at least.

Whilst it has been reported in other media that AMR boss John Gaw has been very critical of the team's reduced performance since Le Mans because of the multiple changes in BoP, he has also been very keen to praise the team and driver's for the 'character' in seeking out and pushing for any possibility of a result through this imbalance since the disappointment of Le Mans. #TeamAMR.


For Shanghai he expects more of the same - “Shanghai looks like it will be a similar story and, while we will clearly go with the full intention to do the very best we can, with the performance deficit, we have a huge challenge ahead" he said.

In other news for Shanghai the team have confirmed the return of Richie Stanaway into the #99 car alongside Fernando Rees and Alex MacDowall having now completed his GP2 duties with Status GP.

Liam Griffin rejoins the #96 RoFGo car with Stuart Hall and Francesco Castellacci due to the continued absence of Roald Goethe. He for one will be looking for an improvement in his own driving after his difficult GTE baptism in the weather affected Fuji round.


Whilst the #98 Am car of Pedro Lamy, Paul Dalla-Lana and Mathias Lauda remains the same after their well earned podium finish in Fuji the most notable exception comes in the remaining #97 Pro car of Darren Turner and Jonny Adam.

Whilst these two have shared the car in the last two rounds the name of Stefan Mucke was never far away, but for Shanghai the German does not figure in the AMR equation in any of the cars. Whilst there may be a perfectly good explanation for this it will also serve as 'fuel to the fire' of his imminent release to new GTE project! He does however, figure in Aston Martin Racing's plan for the forthcoming FIA GT World Cup event in Macau next month.

For the penultimate WEC event of the 2015 season at Shanghai and for those of us in Europe most of the track action will unfortunately be in the early hours of Friday 30th October. Qualifying starts at 05.30Hrs GMT on Saturady and the race 03:00Hrs GMT on Sunday.

Photo credits - Aston Martin Racing