A very busy day and its still only Friday for #TeamAMR

No Nicki Thiim of course as he is busy a bit further south in France as the GT World Challenge Endurance Cup Series gets under way with its 1000km of Paul Ricard that will run at the circuit tomorrow night, allowing him and others to get back to the Circuit de La Sarthe in time for Sundays LM24 Test Day.

Dalla Lana commented on stage about the importance of arriving at Le Mans with a clear mind (a reference to recent failures at the event) whilst Pittard expressed his excitement of being at the event for the first time as well as leading the GTE Am Championship prior to the event as well. Dalla Lana was also questioned about coming back next year in the LM24 Centenary year and what will be the last year of the GTE Am class too.

Also at the circuit but not going through the same process until tomorrow morning, has both the TF Sport prepared AMR Vantage GTE’s – one indeed sporting an inverted livery design to normal with the #33 TF Sport car of Ben Keating, Henrique Chaves and Marco Sorenson being presented next to their stable crew from D’Station Racing and Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg.

Presently, Keating is at Le Mans by himself as his co-drivers are both busy with their GT World Challenge Endurance Cup obligations down at Le Castellet too.

But with that said, there has been some concern today regarding the health and welfare of Marco Sorenson following an apparent heavy impact into the crash barrier with his Beechdean AMR Vantage GT3 during an earlier session. We know that the session was red flagged at the time and the Dane was taken to the local medical centre for checks but since, the team has confirmed general wellness as well as his fitness to drive in tomorrow’s race – if the team can fix the #97 Pro Class car in time of course?

Earlier in the day and despite the torrential rain, Andrew Howard ran well during the Bronze Driver test (P10) before Valentin Hasse-Clot finished Free Practice with a second quickest time in class in the dry before the crew (including third man Theo Nouet) rounded off today’s proceedings in Pre-Qualifying in P11.

Tomorrow morning will see both the #97 Gold Class and (hopefully) the #97 Pro Class Beechdean AMR cars complete their three Qualifying runs before the race that starts at 18:00hrs local.

Also competing at Paul Ricard today is the GT4 European Series who also hold their second round of the season with another capacity grid of 50 cars, featuring eleven AMR Vantage GT4 powered crews amongst them.

FP1 finished well for the two Racing Spirit of Lemans Aston Martins which both finished in the top 5 overall (P1 & 2 in Silver Cup) with the #24 Prosport Racing AMR there third in class too as well as the #89 AGS Events Racing AMR at the top of the list in the Am Class too.

The later FP2 session this time saw the #24 Prosport car the highest Aston Martin in fifth overall, third in Silver just ahead of the #10 Racing Spirit of Lemans car with the #89 AGS Events car against first in Am. The second Prosport Racing car however suffered from issues over the two available sessions that saw it only complete two laps!

Finally, we will see the Super Taikyu Series annual 24hour visit to Fuji International Speedway get underway early tomorrow morning with just a sole D’Station Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT8R representing the team and brand.

With the ‘team elders’ presently busy at Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship, it has fallen onto a revised driver line up of Kenji Hama, Max Orido, Tsubasa Kondo, Kosuke Matsuura and Jake Parsons to contest their new for 2022 ST1 class.

Photo credits – D Gibson / Teams / GT4 European / GT World Challenge / ACO