Three Astons step up for VLN1 this w/e
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Three Aston Martin Racings cars step up for the opening round of the 2018 VLN Series this weekend from the Nordschleife.
For whats expected to be another full season entry, sees Avia Racing listed again with their easily identifiable red and white Mathol Racing prepared AMR V8 Vantage GT4 for another season of racing around the infamous Green Hell. The return of the driver line up of Wolfgang Weber, Thomas Krebs and Daniel Schwerfeld will compete in what is expected be a highly competitive SP10 (GT4) Class against the newer German OEM platforms.
Re-iterating comments made by Aston Martin Racing President David King at last weeks GTE briefing from the Prodrive facility of that most, if not all of Aston Martin's racing commitments for the VLN Series this year will be via their AMR Performance Centre (new name for AM Test Centre) and only as a customer concern.
We see that Aston Martin's Vantage GT8 is again in popular demand with experienced Gentleman drivers wanting to step up from the BoP'd GT4 class to something slightly less powerful (and expensive) of a GT3 platform and for Saturday's opener, we see R-Motorsport's racer and customer driver coach Markus Lungstrass compete with experience VLN runner and Aston Martin customer Heinz Jurgen Kroner in the highly successful SP8 runner in which he won the N24 SP8 class in last year.
Joining them in that class will be the familiar AMR Performance Centre Vantage N24 car (top) featuring some very familiar GT/sportscar driver names behind the wheel as Francois Perrodo, Emmanuel Collard and Mathieu Vaxiviere each use the arrive and drive availability of the smaller class car in order to gain their Nordschleife GT3 licence just as many others have done before them.
Photo credits - Aston Martin / VLN / Avia Racing