Time passing galleries - Part 5 Vantage GTE hits the track
Monday, April 20, 2020
As well as the new V12 Vantage GT3 hitting the race tracks of Europe for the first time, 2012 also saw Aston Martin Racing's new V8 Vantage GTE hit the track for the first time within the equally new World Endurance Championship. Until then, the factory team had only ran prototypes in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup and Le Mans Series over the preceding four years.
The new GTE Pro and Am class cars were heavily regulated through technical rule books that stopped the expensive, constant redevelopment of the cars all the teams embarked upon a new eight round global season that would start in Sebring, Florida and end seven months and seventy two hours of racing later in China.
For Aston Martin Racing, they were to enter just a sole full season GTE Pro car entry for drivers Darren Turner, Stefan Mucke and Adrian Fernandez who would be joined at Le Mans by the #99 GTE Am car entry of the original Dane Train members of Christoffer Nygaard, Allan Simonsen and Kristian Poulsen and two other Pro Am cars at the Silverstone round midway through the inaugural WEC season.
The team's home race at Silverstone in August 2012 would result in a P3 finish for the #97 GTE Pro car, a P5 finish for the #98 RoFGo GTE Am car of Roald Goethe and Stuart Hall and an unfortunate late DNF for the #99 GTE Am Beechdean car of Andrew Howard, Jonny Adam and Paul White with what became one of the few engine issues in the racing life span of the normally aspirated V8 4.5litre V8.
These cars were captured by us, again at Snetterton, having a quiet test post Le Mans 24hr just a week or so before this. The following sets are of the cars at Le Mans and Silverstone respectively.
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Le Mans 24h
Silverstone WEC