Any more than these six Aston Martins at British GT finale?
Tuesday, November 03, 2020
Despite the previous rounds of the season that have been ran so far being at MSV owned circuits with a limited paddock attendance with restricted pre-paying fans allowed in, the British GT Championship has now been awarded Elite sports status (something that was necessary for it to continue under these current national circumstances) but that has meant that even fewer than this new ‘usually few’ number of people who may be present at the circuit this time around.
Whilst the paying fans cannot be in attendance and now many mainstream media staff also cannot be in attendance despite previous acknowledgement, we now know that the SRO sanctioned Championship can indeed produce a TV package that meets most of our needs whilst the event is in progress.
Whilst COVID and politics wreaked havoc on the Championship at the start of the year and then restricted our own enjoyment throughout the season, we do at least have the two full season TF Sport Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4’s of Jamie Caroline/Dan Vaughan and Connor O’Brien/Patrick Kibble very much in contention in their respective Championship hunts as they will now be joined with at least another four Aston Martins at this final round from various teams.
Sticking with TF Sport as first to announce is a Vantage GT3 car for their 2019 British GT GT4 Champion Tom Canning who will drive alongside former Blancpain GT Series racer and now bronze rated driver Giacomo Petrobelli. For Canning, this is very much of a race mileage exercise after his own British GT GT3 season with GT3 Champion Graham Davidson fell away at the start of the year because of COVID-19 but he has has now been named as part of the Oman Racing with TF Sport’s Asian Le Mans GT3 squad with Omani racer Ahmad Al Harty and Le Mans GTE Am Champion Jonny Adam.
Later, we had the Garage 59 team also confirm that one of their AMR Vantage GT3’s will be present at the end of season endurance with part of their GT World Challenge Europe and Spa 24 runners up crew of Alex West and Jonny Adam behind the wheel for what will be the Swedish drivers first encounter within the UK’s national GT series.
Being a shrewd business man who doesn’t spend the sums of money that he does on motorsport lightly, this encounter for him will be a calculated move for him (and the team) for yet more race mileage ahead of the GT World Challenge Europe finale at Paul Ricard in two weeks time (if indeed that race now goes ahead at all after France has also now entered into a further period of national lockdown). Their #188 Pro-Am car that they share with Chris Goodwin in that Series are tied equal first in their Championship standings after their P3 finish at Spa Francorchamps two weeks ago.
When challenged as to whether this event was a pre-cursor to a future full season entry for him and the team – well the answer was very much nearer no than yes!!
The final AMR Vantage GT3 that we expect to see is the next to new Ultimate Speed Racing machine for drivers Mike Brown and Matt Manderson. Having taken collection of the car in early September, the team entered both the GT Cup and British GT events at Donington Park later that month where the duo enjoyed some silverware success getting to know their new car in the former Championship.
The team have also been out at Silverstone, like many of the full season entries, testing their cars and drivers under the guise of a prestige car track day events where we have seen that their ‘fresh out the showroom white’ colour scheme has now been replaced with a silver livery backdrop.
Finally, but certainly by no means least we have had only today seen that the Newbridge Motorsport team have had their AMR Vantage GT4 confirmed as a further entry into the Silverstone 500 for drivers Alex Toth-Jones and James Dorlin.
Toth-Jones was part of the Academy Motorsport team that ran two great silver liveried Astons in the Championship last year where he was partnered by Will Moore whilst Dorlin raced a Toleman Motorsport McLaren 570s in the same season.
Whilst Toth-Jones was linked with a GT3 drive within the Beechdean AMR Team at the turn of the year, he and Dorlin alike both swapped to the Porsche Sprint Challenge Series for the 2020 season with the former also seen racing aboard this Aston Martin within the GT Cup Championship with some success.
The full entry list is expected tomorrow so we will have to wait until then to see whether or not Andrew Howard and his Beechdean AMR Vantage GT3 will make any further appearance in the Championship after his and Jonny Adam's last appearance at Brands Hatch at the end of August.
Photo credits – BGT / GTWCE / GT Cup
