First AMR line up confirmed for Gulf 12Hrs

Yesterday saw the reveal of the first Provisional entry list ahead the ninth edition of the Gulf 12Hr from the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi in mid December, a list that included just two Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's from both the Optimum Motorsport and Generation AMR SuperRacing teams.

Despite our own best efforts to secure both teams with a suitably qualified driver line up, it appears that the good old 'who's already in my mobile phone directory' approach has led to certainly one team completing their trio of drivers with the other just waiting for the contractural T&C's to clear before revealing theirs.


What we can say is that for the David Appleby Engineering prepared AMR car, 2019 shall see the return of their former winning trio of James Holder, Matthew George and Steve Tandy regroup in to Holder's new GT4 car to kind of defend their (then) GTX crown that they won back in 2017 but were unable to defend the year later.

What is different of course this year is that 2017 was within the older, normally aspirated Vantage whilst this year will be with the car turbo charged era of race car that internationally debuted at this event last year in both GT3 and GT4 form. Whilst the car was still in developmental form back then the car has gone on to prove its worth in many series around the world including a British GT GT4 Championship win for Tom Canning who drove the car at the Gulf 12Hr back in 2018.


The other AMR entry is another GT4 car from Optimum Motorsport. Chatting without team boss Shaun Goff at the final round of the GT Cup Championship at Snetterton last weekend he explained that there was an original intention of entering a GT3 car for December's event but commitments elsewhere with the proposed drivers meant that that was no longer possible so just a single GT4 was reverted to for a driver line up as then not yet fully confirmed.


This years event starts on track with the first Free Practice session on Thursday 12th December before further Free Practice and Qualifying sessions on Friday ahead of the start of Part to the twelve hour race at 09:00hrs (local) and running for six hours ahead of a short break and then resumption to the final six hours at 18:00hrs (local).

Photo credits - Gulf 12Hr / DAE