What a day its been ..................
Monday, February 25, 2019
In a week where several team announcements are due, todays news certainly got matters off to a flying start with both new team PROsport Performance confirming their second Vantage GT3 driver line up for the ADAC GT Masters series and the earlier surprise announcement from Garage 59.
One person's loss is another persons gain as the say and that is certainly so with the long standing McLaren GT team Garage 59 confirming today that they will be swapping over from the McLaren to the new 2019 specification AMR Vantage GT3 for a two car programme in Blancpain GT and single car entry into the Intercontinental GT Challenge for 2019.
That decision must have been influenced by the teams recent judgements against them in the British Courts but who's complaining - certainly not the President of Aston Martin Racing David King who added that "Garage 59 has chosen to race with the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in 2019 is a strong endorsement of the potential of our new car and of Aston Martin Racing’s ability to deliver competitive customer-focussed machinery. We’re very pleased with this latest addition to our partner team roster and we can now look ahead to the year in the full knowledge that we have a compelling presence in several significant and important GT series around the world.”
It will certainly be great to catch the first images of these guys testing their new cars down at Paul Ricard this week with drivers such as AML's High Performance Test and Development driver Chris Goodwin, AMR factory driver Jonny Adam and former McLaren Academy driver Andrew Watson amongst possible several more?
They (Garage 59) will not be the only ones testing new generation AMR Vantage GT3's down in southern France as at least two other teams (who have yet to confirm their specific re-participation in the series) conduct their first full family test in the new car.
Then there was later today, the confirmation from the German based PROsport Performance team of the identity to their driver line up in their second AMR Vantage GT3 for their national ADAC GT Masters Series.
Joining the previously announced line up of AMR factory driver Maxime Martin and former champion Daniel Kielwitz will be the accomplished young Swiss LMP2 driver Hugo De Sadeleer alongside another young star from the French and Belgium Porsche Carrera Cup Championships Valentin Hasse-Clot.
That news gives the team two distinct line ups - one with a wealth of experience and the other with youth and vigour which will feed well across both cars in the garage.
Finally but no means least today, we saw first images of the new D'Station Racing Vantage GT3 conducting their first shakedown tests with their new car that they will be entering into the Japanese GT300 side of the Super GT Series with drivers Tomonobu Fujii and JP De Oliviero.
Todays test was at the Fuji International Speedway circuit and was purely a familiarisation and system check and confirmation rather than anything more which will surely follow fairly soon.
Quite a frantic day really and its only still Monday - but there is still more to come - several more to come infact!!
Photo credits - AMR / D'Station Racing / PROsport Performance