Pittard confirmed to run in #98 Northwest AMR Vantage GTE at Sebring after all? (UPDATED)

Friday, March 11, 2022

 


Thanks to Dailysportscar.com, we finally learn today that David Pittard should still be eligible to compete in the #98 Northwest AMR Vantage GTE at both this weekend’s Prologue Test and at next weekend’s opening round of the World Endurance Championship after winning his appeal with the FIA.

Having been recruited as a silver grade driver to fit neatly between the Bronze of Paul Dalla Lana and the Platinum of Nicki Thiim, the young Brit suffered the angst of being elevated to gold over the winter and therefore was outside of Regulations to compete within the team in any part of the 2022 WEC and Le Mans 24 season.


Today’s report from Graham Goodwin suggests that Pittard has won his grading appeal with the FIA and can therefore go about his duties with the team at this weekend’s mandatory (for him) test weekend and into next week’s preparatory sessions for the 1000 Miles of Sebring opening round.

That is fantastic news, not just for him but also the greater AMR fan base as the #98 Northwest AMR crew could easily be considered as a pre-season favourite within their GTE Am class. We also see that the #98 car will indeed compete in the colour scheme of their recent Daytona Rolex 24 GTD effort but is apparently not the same platform (converted to GTE) as they used in January.


This news completes the Aston Martin line up going into the Prologue as the #33 TF Sport Vantage GTE of Ben Keating, Marco Sorenson and Florian Latorre and the #777 D’Station Racing Vantage GTE entry of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg remain unchanged as do their cars colour schemes as see last season.

Staying with the WEC, yesterday finally saw the confirmation of the entry list into this season’s 24 Hours of Le Mans after delays caused by the global embargoes and restrictions being placed upon Russian interests.


It was however slightly disappointing to read that no more Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GTE crews were being accepted into the sixty-two-car entry for this year’s mainly thanks to the larger full season WEC entry this year and all of the outlining automatic entries from other ACO rules series and from America, all leaving little room for ad-hoc entries.

The TF Sport European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series entry from John Hartshorne is the best option as fifth reserve out of only six this year after those affected by the Russian saga were removed.


Track action at the Prologue begins from Sebring at 09:35hrs local tomorrow with the second session starting at 14:25hrs local and similarly on Sunday.

Again thanks to the timely reporting from Dailysportscar.com  overnight, it appears that Henrique Chaves is at Sebring ready to step aboard the #98 Northwest AMR should Pittard's FIA appeal have been unsuccessful. 

A little official team clarification wouldn't go amiss here!!

Photo credits – AMR / TF Sport / WEC
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • StumbleUpon
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Technorati
  • Facebook
  • TwitThis
  • MySpace
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • Google
  • Reddit
  • Sphinn
  • Propeller
  • Slashdot
  • Netvibes