Early weekend insight for #TeamAMR

Its been another busy start to yet another busy racing weekend for both Aston Martin Racing and its customer teams across Europe today.

The headline event has to be the World Endurance Championship over in Germany where the three factory cars are competing in both GTE Pro and GTE Am. Todays two Free Practice sessions saw good initial outings from both Pro cars with the #97 car of Darren Turner and Richie Stanaway being second fastest in FP1 and then the fastest in class in FP2. Its sister #95 car of Marco Sorensen and Nicki Thiim were third and fourth respectively.

The three drivers within the #98 GTE Am entry - Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda also enjoyed early dominance within their own class finishing P1 and and then P4 over both sessions.


These positions, whilst initially encouraging should be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt as all teams will only be fulfilling their own setup criteria when FP3 and Qualifying begin to show a truer pace.

The third and final Free Practice session will be at 09.15hrs local tomorrow followed by Qualifying later at 14.15hrs local.


In other European news, the GT Open series is at Silverstone this weekend with just TF Sport again being the sole #TeamAMR representative for their double header that will be round four.

The #34 V12 Vantage GT3 of Salih Yoluc and Euan Hankey appears to be building up to tomorrows first race in their own style having finished both Free Practice sessions today in P3. Tomorrow will see Yoluc qualify the car ahead of Race 1 later in the afternoon before Hankey has his qualifying session on Sunday morning ahead of race 2 again later in the afternoon.


On the domestic news front today - there was a busy paddock at Snetterton today with various teams utilising the free test facility ahead of tomorrows AMOC meeting. Regular entries into that series were there from Vantage Racing, Stratton Motorsport and Ultimate Speed Racing but there were also several cars presently competing within the British GT Championship.

Beechdean's Jamie Chadwick, Paul Hollywood were there with the #407 car (don't know why they were using that and not their own car) to help bolster confidence and gain important seat time ahead of the 2 hour race there in a couple of weeks. They were there testing under the watchful eye of Ross Gunn.


Returnees David Tinn and Andrew Jarman were also there clocking up a few more miles and so were PFL Motorsports with their V12 Vantage GT3 completing its shakedown following their cars significant incident at Silverstone several weeks ago. Speaking with the team it is clear that their car suffered significant front and rear end damage when the tail lift on their lorry failed at the end of the Silverstone round and that the repair bill was close to a six figure sum.

Their colleague who broke a foot in the incident is apparently making good progress with his recovery.


Finally, at Oulton Park this weekend two Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4's will be competing at round five of the GT Cup.

A car from Team Goinglean and 22GT Racing will be bearing the honour of the team there over their three race format.