Friends reunited

Friday, July 06, 2018

Thanks to the tireless work of our Facebook friends at Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3 Chassis Number Tracking, we have today rekindled friendships with old cars that seemed to have disappeared from our midst over the early months of 2018.

Conspicuous by its absence from last months Aston Martin Racing Festival At Le Mans was the iconically Bilstein liveried V12 Vantage GT3, affectionately known as 'Billie' and used by the AMR factory team at events such as the ADAC Zurich N24 with drivers such as Darren Turner, Stefan Mucke and Pedro Lamy at the wheel.

Originally owned by Paul White, the car was purchased a couple of years ago and indeed raced by Austrian fanatic Alexander Lienau as late as the Masters Endurance Legends event at Imola only last month before being sold very recently to its new owner Mike Gensemeyer who is due to run the car at this weekend's Le Mans Classic.

The other car coming back into the limelight is the next to new, former Solaris Motorsport V12 Vantage GT3 that was run by the team in the International GT Open Series with drivers Francesco Sini and Mauro Calamia.

Having destroyed their original chassis in a winter season test at Paul Ricard, the Italian team laboured for many weeks to build themselves a new car from scratch, missing various rounds of the season before calling it a day after the Silverstone round last year.