Opposing ends of the success spectrum for Team AMR crews today

With Aston Martin Racing Vantages involved in three significant European based series this weekend, Saturday saw a day of opposing success rates as teams jockeyed for position either in their first race of the weekend or qualifying for their main event tomorrow.

A team who desperately needed some kind of early success was Italian based Solaris Motorsport who had had to date the most dreadful start to their 2017 endeavours in the International GT Open Championship. This weekend at Paul Ricard in France the #007 of Francesco Sini and Mauro Calamia did have difficult testing and free practice sessions although Sini was able to qualify the car P13 out of 28 runners this morning.


Unfortunately, race 1 lasted no longer than the opening half dozen corners before slight contact with a spinning car in front, even before the cars hit the long Mistral Straight caused a puncture that would soon loose them the lead lap and hence any chance in that race.

What does this team have to do to enjoy any kind of racing success this year? Hopefully that will start with Race 2 tomorrow afternoon.


Meanwhile, over at Silverstone the British GT teams were having their Free Practice sessions this morning before Qualifying for their 3hr Silverstone 500 show piece event tomorrow.

With the single race meeting format again requiring both drivers to contribute to an aggregate Qualifying time it was the crew of the #24 MacMillan Racing Vantage GT3 who secured overall pole position by less than one tenth of s second ahead of the #31 Team Parker Racing Bentley.

Both TF Sport GT3's were not so fortunate (still having handling problems that arose at Rockingham?) to finish P7 for the #1 Johnston/Adam car and P9 for the #11 Farmer/Barnes. The #62 Academy car of Matt Nichol-Jones and Will Moore entered no times as they (the drivers and crew) are over at the Red Bull Ring racing in the European GT4 Series Northern Cup - until tomorrow when they all fly back for Sundays BGT race.


The remaining AMR runner - the #42 MacMillan Racing GT4 of Jan Jonck and Will Phillips did finally enjoy a little but of fortune by qualifying P3 in class - suppose they all took note of the team's whiteboard instruction!!

Finally, two AMR V8 Vantages from Academy Motorsport and Street Art Racing were in action today at the Red Bull Ring in Austria with their first race of the weekend.


Despite some very encouraging Free Practice times earlier the #62 ended Qualifyingfor Race 1 in P13 and the Street Art Racing in P17. A sizeable crash involving a McLaren 570s lost the grid a large percentage of the race. On only the second lap after the restart a pass made by Nichol-Jones coming onto the pit straight on a KTM was repaid with a brutal sideswipe by the same KTM into Turn 1 which also involved the Street Art Racing car. The #62 was retired on the spot with significant alignment damage.


A lap later the #7 Street Art Racing car of Jerome Demay also retired with damage resulting from the same Turn 1 incident.

So, as we go into Sunday's timetable we hope that some carry on what they have been doing whilst with others we hope they have more luck and fortune although seeing the #62 back out in Austria maybe a feat too steep to achieve.

Photo credits - British GT / European GT4 / Fotospeedy / Solaris / MacMillan