New AMR Vantage GT4's fly at ADAC Total N24

Friday, June 21, 2019

All four new Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4's entered by both the AMR Performance Centre and PROsport Performance customer team made significant improvements over the course of yesterdays weather interrupted track sessions, all ahead of this weekends ADAC Total 24 H race from the infamous Nordschelife circuit in southern Germany.

Having 'baptised' their new GT4 racing chariot at the most perhaps the most difficult racing circuit in the world last month in the events preceding Qualification Race, available track time yesterday afternoon was somewhat limited due to torrential rain around parts of the 26km during the earlier Free Practice session that resulted in it being red flagged and not resumed due to the number of cars having incidents around the circuit.

During Free Practice, representative lap times were at least being entered by three of the five Aston Martins competing at the event (the fifth being the AMR performance Centre entered Vantage GT8 customer car) and they were headed by the #36 Darren Turner / Chris Goodwin / Christian Gebhardt SP8T car which was ahead of the #68 PROsport Performance car of Jorg Viebahn / Joonas Lappalainen / Nicolaj Moller-Madson car by just 1/10th of a second.

With the circuit eventually drying out enough for the first of the Qualifying session yesterday evening, these times became history as again the #36 car wiped nearly twenty seconds off its best lap time to end the session the fastest AMR car in overall P40 with a lap time of 9:03:493. This time all five cars were able to enter the required number of laps per driver to 'Qualify' for the race with further qualifying sessions to be used to determine their precise starting position and were spread between P40 and P77 of the 155 car grid that completed Q1.

Early issues with the GT8 and #37 Vantage GT4 were quickly overcome to allow each crew to get their schedule back on track despite the earlier loss of track time with the GT8 ending its first day 4th fastest in its SP8 class.

As the crews now look forward to todays further two Qualifying sessions, all are presently placed as follows in the proceedings:-

So after Q1, positions are: SP8T

P1 #36 Darren Turner / Chris Goodwin / Christian Gebhardt
P4 #37 Jamie Chadwick / Alex Brundle / Peter Cate

SP10

P2 #68 Jorg Viebahn / Joonas Lappalainen / Nicolaj Moller-Madson
P5 #76 Christoph Breuer / Alex Mies / Kay van Berlo / Mike David Ortmann

SP8

P4 #35 Marco Muller / Tony Richard / Heinz Jurgen Kroner / David Thilenius