Valentin Hasse-Clot secures 2020 Aston Martin Racing Drivers Academy title

Friday, January 22, 2021

Congratulations to young Parisian and Aston Martin Racer, Valentin Hasse-Clot for today securing the 2020 edition of the AMR Drivers Academy process and Junior Driver status following in the footsteps of recent winners Ross Gunn and Tom Canning.

Having stepped across to GT racing from his early days in Porsche Carrera Cup Series in both Great Britain and France after the 2018 season, Hasse-Clot got his first taste of the Vantage GT3 with the Beechdean AMR team within the British GT Championship and an ill-fated introduction in the GT Masters Series before moving on (only from circumstance with the initial outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2019 that prevented him from rejoining the Beechdean team) to the AGS Events Racing Team within the highly competitive GT4 European Series.

There, he and co-driver Theo Nouet ultimately secured the Silver Cup Championship win with the team’s new AMR Vantage GT4 but also gained significant success with the Garage 59 AMR GT3 team with a parallel season within the GT World Challenge Europe Series where he, Andrew Watson and James Pull ultimately finished fourth in that Championship.

Not only was Hasse-Clot developing his own driver skills within the Series mentioned above, he also took on the responsibility of managing his countryman Nouet’s own racing carrier together with arranging a driver test for himself, Nouet and the new IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge winner Nate Stacey’s test aboard a Garage 59 Vantage GT3 following the final round of the GTWCE season at Paul Ricard.

Whether associated with todays announcement or not but Hasse-Clot gets immediately back to work in 2021 with a four race debut within the Asian Le Mans Series with the Garage 59 team over in Dubai and Abu Dhabi next month with co-drivers Alex West and Maxime Martin. Clearly the Frenchman has a very strong eye on competing at the home of GT and sportscar racing at Le Mans.

As part of his reward for topping the class of 2020, Hasse-Clot will receive career assistance and guidance from Aston Martin Racing through this season, including a financial contribution to his race programme. He will also continue to receive coaching from Aston Martin’s works drivers and a range of measures to support his development through 2021.

With the emphasis very much upon customer racing in 2021, Aston Martin Racing have confirmed the return of the Drivers Academy process in 2021 with details following in due course although early applications would be welcome.