R-Motorsport hit hard by the continuing CV-19 restrictions

Taking yesterday's confirmation that Swiss based Aston Martin Racing team, R-Motorsport would pay no further part in what is left of the 2020 season as a simple statement of fact was nothing short of a complete disaster for all those involved with the team, the series they were due to compete in and for us fans.

Since stepping up from their early days of 'simple' ad-hoc VLN participation for both team partners (plus supporting network of customer drivers) in on of their AMR Vantage GT4's racing under their St Gallen name, 2020 was due to see the team again enter two of their new AMR Vantage GT3 cars into both of the World Challenge Europe Sprint and Endurance rounds as well as an additional Vantage GT4 in the supporting GT4 European Series.


Those series were in addition to the worldwide Intercontinental GT Challenge that the team had already started by taking the new turbo charged Vantage GT3 to Bathurst for the first time in early February 2020.

The team also had ambitions, although there was never to be any further word on this from the team of their Vantage Cup Series concept beyond that of its launch announcement with Florian Kamelger, Andreas Baenziger and Dr Andy Palmer from Aston Martin.


Of course, the tail end of the 2019 came with significant cost for the team as they abandoned their German DTM efforts even before the end of the season after suffering from persistent performance issues that simply left them uncompetitive against their BMW/Audi/Mercedes peers - that must have left a large hole in the balance sheet of the team that the current COVID-19 pandemic only served to exaggerated this year.

As with all professional race teams, racing is a business working to a proven business model and when that model is affected by circumstances beyond their control (no spectators/corporate guests/shortened season/unpredictable situation moving forward) all of that leaves you with a simple decision with regards to moving forward or not!


Clearly the business heads on the team bosses outweighed that of their hearts.

These guys are not the first to be affected in the world of motorsport by the ongoing worldwide response to the COVID-19 pandemic - they certainly will not be the last either as we know of a few other national and European programmes going back under the spotlight by their paymasters ahead of any final go-no go decision but for us AMR fans, they are the biggest - and it hurts!!

For us, our only glimpse of their 2020 efforts came in the form of the Official Test for the GT World Challenge Europe at the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France back in mid March. For some of their confirmed eleven drivers, this news has allowed them to concentrate on other programmes whilst many others have been sadly left with few options right now.


"The required access restrictions at race events prevent us from offering our exclusive R-Experience hospitality to our customers and partners, which is vital not only for R-Motorsport but for the business of our entire group of companies."

"Irrespective of the decision not to race this season we are already fully committed to our programme in 2021 and beyond” said Kamelger.