Martin added to Garage 59 Pro-Am effort at Bathurst 12hr
Sunday, January 26, 2020
With just under six days ahead of the start to the 2020 Liqui Moly Bathurst 12Hours sees the Garage 59 announce a bold step forward in their attempt to win the Pro-Am class aboard their #188 Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3.
Having only last week confirmed their first full season participation in the International GT Challenge Series that the Bathurst event is now the first round of, Garage 59 and Aston Martin Racing today confirmed that Belgium factory driver Maxime Martin would now be joining Alex West, Chris Goodwin and Come Ledogar as a late addition to the #188 car.
We asked why this may have come about and a certain 'little bird' directly connected with the team confirmed that it was a simple case of driver times and how that differed between Pro and Am driver ratios aboard the car.
We were told that in a car with one Pro and two Am drivers, the Pro is limited to a maximum drive time of just 280 minutes whereas two Pro's with two Ams in the same car, each Pro has a maximum drive time of 240 minutes each - that's a total of 480 minutes against 280 minutes. Simple mathematics on drive time which maximises the chances of overall class victory.
The teams second entry the #159 Silver car was last week confirmed to include Andrew Watson and Roman de Angelis together with so far little known Dutch historic and most lately GT4 European Series racer, Oliver Hart. The former two are now en route to the New South Wales circuit after their endeavours at this weekends IMSA Rolex 24 with Aston Martin Racing and Heart of Racing.
With the start of the race beginning in the early hours of Sunday morning, first track action begins Friday morning for the non Platinum/Gold rated drivers .
Photo credits - AMR / Garage 59