The new V8 Vantage GT4 taking shape to hit the track running in 2019

For the second time this year a very welcome visitor made another stealthy entrance into a racing paddock to take pride of place for the viewing public.

Unlike at the Aston Martin Racing Festival paddock at Le Mans back in June, the new turbo charged V8 Vantage GT4 was this time a fully working development chassis about to hit a race track for the very first time as the team progress the chassis to its fully homologated state in time for the start of the 2019 season.


Taking its place outside the Beechdean AMR hospitality unit at Donington Park on Sunday, the deep blue with lime green detailed car certainly caused a stir with not just the public but also with many members of the AMR Customer team family seeing it for the first time. Long time AMR customer Andrew Howard and AMR factory driver Nicki Thiim were certainly very interested to hear and see  the technical detail that lies behind the facade of the car with another team even stealing the 'limelight' to showcase there latest acquisition of two such cars to the paddock!


With a few notable changes in appearance this time around to that at Le Mans - namely the more sculptured and proportioned rear spoiler - we understood from the team that the car has only completed a 'few hundred' kilometres of straight line systems check runs along a local runway, mainly in the capable hands of Ross Gunn but the car is now due to hit a race track proper within the next few days.


The final round of the British GT Championship was of course used to announce the first few official sales of the factory's new GT3 and GT4 Vantages to teams like TF Sport, Optimum Motorsport and Academy Motorsport although we understand that several more chassis of each class were also on the order sheet with deposits paid for with several more teams within that paddock.


Keeping details close to their chests, the best we could get out of the factory personnel was that delivery of these early confirmed cars 'should' be by the end of the year but that will obviously depend upon how testing and development continues to progress with the cars. We saw that Marco Sorensen had flown immediately after the #Doningtondecider to Jerez to continue the test programme of the GT3 chassis after its previous run out at Vallelunga with Jonny Adam and Darren Turner in Italy last week.


Seeing that the development GT4 car came to the circuit with a passenger seat fitted we had to suggest to the team that they should run a competition to win a hot seat ride in the car at one its future UK test days! It would be rude not too after all!!

With six units already confirmed the future is bright - the future is #limelight!