Day 1 of The Prologue complete

Under the sweltering clear blue skies of southern Spain, three cars from the Aston Martin Racing stable completed the first of a two day official test today at the World Endurance Championship Prologue at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Only three cars out of a confirmed four car entry for the 2019-2020 WEC season that starts in little over five weeks time at Silverstone at the end of August, but with a long line of drivers all hoping of a chance of maintaining or progressing their way up onto the world stage.


Having unveiled their distinctly revised livery upon the AMR factory supported cars together with a brand new livery for the TF Sport prepared V8 Vantage GTE, over eleven drivers were on hand today to start the proceedings and have the required official Championship photographs taken as many found themselves double booked between this event and the start to the proceedings for the Total Spa 24H over in Belgium.

Drivers Jonny Adam (TF Sport), Ross Gunn, Nicki Thiim, Maxime Martin, Matthieu Vaxivierre and Alex Lynn only had time to participate in this mornings first 4 hours of track time before they all had to leave for Belgium and their AMR Partner team duties over there.


Whilst the #90 TF Sport car is already confirmed with Salih Yoluc being joined again this season by Charlie Eastwood and Jonny Adam, the other GTE Am entry for Paul Dalla Lana obviously has a degree a seat competition in regards who will be joining the Canadian this season after people like Vaxivierre and Gunn joined former regulars Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda at the test.

Times are not of any consequence at the test as the Championship will not be returning to the country during its first winter based season although decent, uninterrupted running obviously was. Whilst the laps times were recorded it is be difficult to determine any kind of pattern to performance amongst any of the GTE Pro or GTE Am fields without the technical data being available.


In GTE Pro - Martin, Thiim and Lynn completed 95 laps between them with Martin posting the seventh quickest time of the session this morning whilst Adam was quickest AMR runner in the Am class in his brand new TF Sport car, just ahead of Vaxivierre in the #98. Laps from Lauda, Turner and Gunn also saw off the session for them.

In this afternoons four hour session only Marco Sorensen ran in the #97 Pro car completing a 'leisurely' 40 laps whilst Lamy, Laura, Turner and Dalla Lana all ran in the #98 car. With Adam now having left the circuit and with his co-drivers Yoluc and Eastwood remaining at Spa, we believe that that car will not run again at the test.


That still leaves plenty of drivers on had to undertake driving duties on the second and final day of the test tomorrow as AMR hope to make use of their final allocation of new confidential Michelin tyres ahead of the Silverstone opener.

Photo credits - AMR / TF Sport