Guesting Oman Racing AMR joins full season Garage 59 entries at the Nurburgring

Up to eighty-six GT3 and GT4 race cars grace the provisional entry lists for this weekend’s penultimate rounds of the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup Series and GT4 European Series from the Nurburgring in Germany with an additional Aston Martin Racing surprise in each.

With the last round of the GTWCE Endurance Cup being the Total Energie Spa 24Hours of nearly a month ago now, some teams have had that long to recompose themselves after the workload of the toughest GT3 24 Hour race about – except for the Garage 59 Aston Martin Racing Partner team who travel to Germany straight off the back of the latest round of the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup from Brands Hatch last weekend.

Whilst their Silver Cup pairing unfortunately struggled again there, it was another confidence boosting double podium for their Pro-Am pairing of Alex West and Jonny Adam as that duo travel to Germany to meet up with their third man (Chris Goodwin) in time for this round’s three-hour race on Sunday afternoon.

Chasing the leaders hard in the Sprint Cup, the #188 Pro-Am crew also have ground to make up in the Endurance Cup after gearbox issues put them out of the Spa 24 early on meaning that West and Goodwin are now fourteen points behind the class leading Ferrari with two races remaining.

Alongside the #188 car will of course be the #159 Silver Cup car of Valentin Hasse-Clot, Alex MacDowall and Nicolai Kjaergaard. For them, a slow start to the season at both Monza and Paul Ricard was bolstered by a great performance at Spa which lifts the trio up to P10 in the Silver Cup table – still some thirty-two points behind the championship leaders but still with some time to do something about it both at the Nurburgring before finally at Barcelona.

These two full season entries will be joined by another one of Tom Ferrier’s one off “specials” as Ahmad Al Harthy, Giacomo Petrobelli and Charlie Eastwood re-join the series for this round in the #97 Oman Racing with TF Sport AMR Vantage GT3 that last competed in the Le Mans Cup at Le Mans a couple of weeks ago.

With Aston Martin Racing sadly reduced to supporting the ventures of its partner and customer teams only at present, every effort is being made to secure the continued loyalty of customer drivers like Al Harthy, Petrobelli and more recently Michael Dinan with the marque for this and subsequent years to follow. 

With the Omani driver being prevented from committing too much this year due to global travel restrictions and the likes of Dinan very much in the market for a GT3 deal somewhere in the world – these one-off events are specifically designed to keep these people engaged with the brand and its supporting teams as they decide where 2022 will take them – and with whom!

The Nurburgring three-hour race starts at 14:45hrs local.

UPDATE - AMR factory driver Maxime Martin steps into the Oman Racing Aston with Al Harthy and Petrobelli as Charlie Eastwood gets ‘pinged’ for being close to someone who later tested positive for Covid. 

Photo credits – GTWCE / Garage 59 / TF Sport