Looking forward to TF Sport's IMSA debut at the Rolex 24 ###UPDATED###

Some awesome came out of the UK based TF Sport Aston Martin Racing Partner team earlier today with news of their IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship Rolex 24 GTD audition at the Daytona International Speedway early next year.

With presumably some significant involvement with the factory team going on in the background in order to achieve this ‘scoop’, Tom Ferrier’s team will make their American debut at Daytona in January with a driving squad featuring now less than Ben Keating, Charlie Eastwood, Richard Westbrook and rising silver star Maxwell Root. 

The recent racing exploits of bronze rated Gentleman driver Ben Keating need no introduction as the American has ventured his way up from one make Series and up through the national ladder and through the American Le Mans Series, to the now IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship in GTD (GT3) to most recently the World Endurance Championship and Le Mans itself in the bigger GTE.

He will be joined by his younger countryman, Maxwell Root who has spent much of his racing career so far within the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge by Yokohama in the States where he finished fourth in 2018 and second in 2019, each time just behind a certain Roman De Angelis.

All four drivers also raced at Le Mans this year where of course, Eastwood and TF Sport claimed the overall GTE Am race win whilst Westbrook supported the #97 full WEC season car to their P3 overall finish in GTE Pro. Root raced the JMW Ferrari 488 GTE Am and Keating the Project 1 Porsche.

The significance of convincing a man like Keating to swap to the AMR marque from the likes of Porsche cannot be under-estimated considering some of his driving performances of late, especially when he actually outperformed many Pro drivers who should have been faster than him!!!

Whilst today’s announcement just state that this is a ‘one off’ entry for the team and drivers, it does also give scope for it to develop into a full season IMSA entry at some point in the future – just how soon that may be, we will just have to wait and see.

With 2021 expected to be a ‘different year’ in terms of financial commitment for the AMR Factory team, today’s news will certainly be one way they will be using to maintain the good work already undertaken in the Continental USA last year by the Heart of Racing GTD and all the GT4 runners and Champions from the IMSA and SRO sanctioned series, all under the watchful and supporting eye of their strategic partners CSJ Motorsport.

Whilst we wait for some official confirmation of what our American teams will be doing in 2021, this is at least some good news!! 

This announcement also makes for a busy start to the New Year for the TF Sport team with all drivers needing to get in an adequate level of pre-season testing before the Roar before the 24, official test in mid-January before the main event itself at the end of the month. 

The team then move onto the first round of the Asian Le Mans Series from Abu Dhabi just a few days later with a further three rounds at the circuit in February where they have two AMR Vantage GT3’s entered.

###UPDATE###

15th December - it is confirmed that Ben Keating will again be running a split Rolex 24 racing programme with the PR1 Mathiasen LMP2 entry confirmed today alongside that of the TF Sport Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD.