First two races of 2020 kick of this weekend in Dubai and Australia

With the first testing of the New Year now over after IMSA's annual Roar before the 24 last weekend over at Daytona International Speedway in Florida sees the month of January tick over just another week to find the first two race meetings of 2020 over in Dubai and Australia.

Starting with the most established race and with one of the newest of teams to run the new Aston Martin Racing V8 turbo powered Vantage, sees the Newbridge Motorsport team from Milton Keynes in central Britain open their racing account for their new Vantage GT4 over in the Creventic 24H Series annual Dubai 24 season opener.

No strangers to Aston Martin machinery having prepared the older, normally aspirated Vantage GT4 before as well as an AML Vulcan for both national GT events as well as the AMR Festival at Le Mans, this event will hopefully open up a more mainstream racing season for them that could take them all around Europe in series such as British GT, GT4 European Series as well as the 24H Series itself with that chassis.

Competing in the multi class grid of over seventy cars, the #471 Newbridge car will compete with a five driver squad for the Dubai opener - two more recognisable names from the Prosport Performances endeavours of last year in the Series with Belgium racers Rodrique Gillion and Nico Verdonck returning to (hopefully) make amends to what happened with them at the tail of last season where they could have/should have won the GT4 crown. They are this time joined by British tin top racer Ricky Coomber and two South African racers in Paul Hill and Micheal Stephen.

Track action for these guys begins with Private testing tomorrow.

Then a little bit further around the world we will see the preliminary activities taking place that will culminate in the second round of the 2019-20 Asian Le Mans Series taking place from The Bend Motorsport Park in southern Australia.

Tucked just to the south-east of Adelaide, the area has fortunately been relatively devoid of these horrendous forest and bush fires that have been decimating large areas of the country for many months now so hopefully the running of this prestigious event will not deflect any vital emergency resources from where they maybe needed in other parts of the New South Wales.

First time international visitors to the venue, this round of the ALMS will incorporate the full 7.77km circuit which makes it the second longest permanent race track in the world after the Nordschleife.

Japanese team, D'Station Racing AMR have made the relatively short regional flight over from Japan for the event and they will again be joined by AMR's factory hot-shot Ross Gunn after his somewhat disjointed testing endeavours over at the Roar in Florida.

He and his full season Japanese drivers Satoshi Hoshino and Tomonobu Fujii will be looking to capitalise on early gains made by winning the opening round of the season at Shanghai, China back in November within the nine GT car field.

Little is really known about this circuit with few races having been ran on the full circuit but tyre wear and preservation will be critical considering the length of the circuit and the high ambient and track temperatures leading to unquantified rates of tyre degradation. For Aston Martin Racing, the only previous car to race at the circuit was the 2018 Australian GT GT4 Champion of Jeremy Grey with Andrew Miedecke who raced (in the torrential rain) on one of the shorter track configurations so no real help there at all.

Track activities start on Friday with the first of two Free Practices before Qualifying on Saturday afternoon before the start of the four hour marathon just after lunch on Sunday

This race will surely be eventful!! 

Photo credits - ALMS / D'Station / Newbridge