2020 - Let the games begin!!!!

With the international start to the 2020 season of motor racing less than twenty four hours away, today we see the first images of the three new Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3's and GT4 that will compete at IMSA's opening round of their season at Daytona International Speedway later this month being prepared for testing.

Before then of course, all the runners and riders in the Weathertech Sportscar Championship need to complete the qualifying formality of the official Roar before the Twenty Four test that starts at the circuit in Florida tomorrow.

This event will be very important to Aston Martin Racing however as it will see the official debut of their new turbo charged variant of their flagship Vantage GT3 race car, mirroring the accolade that awarded to its smaller GT4 brother last year in the supporting Michelin Pilot Challenge with local Floridian AMR Partner Team - Automatic Racing.


For 2020 however, we shall also see two of the new Vantage GT3's compete in the main event, the 24 hour opening round of the Weathertech Sportcar Championship - one with the new full season entry from the Heart of Racing team and one from an AMR factory supported entry for long term AMR customer and World Endurance Championship racer Paul Dalla Lana - each will compete in the GTD class.

The latter returns to the event last raced at by him back in 2017 when the Canadian businessman was joined by his then long term race partners Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda but for the 2020 event, he swaps his fourth man from Marco Sorensen (as in 2017) to that of his new WEC Super-Silver and birthday boy of yesterday Ross Gunn.


Then we have the Team Seattle crew swap from their previous Porsche chariots to become AMR's first US based GT3 Partner team of 2020 where they have welcomed back team regulars Alex Riberas and Ian James with Porsche USA young gun Roman de Angelis with someone called Nicki Thiim to get their first season back in IMSA off to a flying start. Whilst the car will test in is factory white birthday suit we have been given special permission to reveal a taster of its full season livery as shown below.


Last but certainly by no means least we will also have the #99 AMR Vantage GT4 from the Automatic Racing garage again take part in their (non compulsory) Michelin Pilot Challenge test over the weekend - just the single car for the Roar test although another car is expected from them for the full season which starts in just under three weeks time.

That car entered into the Roar is the Invisible Glass sponsored car with the team now also having taken over the Vantage GT4 that was ran by the AMR strategic partner team CSJ Motorsport in selected events of last years Michelin Pilot Challenge to form their two available V8 turbo GT4 car fleet. Whilst nothing has been confirmed yet we would expect that car to run in the infamous blue Stoner Car Care guise.


Over the course of test sessions on Friday, Saturday and Sunday it is expected that both the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge runners will have about six hours of testing each.

Weather forecasts at the circuit over the weekend have improved over the last few days with mainly warm and sunny intervals expected on Friday, potentially heavy rainfall on Saturday morning before clearing out again into sunny but cooler times into Sunday.

Photo credits - Social media / Heart of Racing