AMR runners looking to continue the momentum of Le Mans as the WEC goes to Monza
Tuesday, July 05, 2022
Bolstered this time by the presence of the two new Peugeot Hyper cars for the first time this year, most eyes will be upon those cars as they join the top-flight prototype battle with the likes of Toyota, Glickenhaus and Alpine but our interest takes us back towards the most competitive class of the grid in GTE Am and from where the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTE took a 1-3 finish last time out at the Circuit de La Sarthe.
With TF Sport rewriting the record books by taking their second outright win within the class in three years, the #33 TF Sport entry of Ben Keating, Henrique Chaves and Marco Sorenson claimed their first Le Mans 24 win at the 90th Edition of the event thanks to a resurgent run from the crew and team through the race and despite the earlier dominance in class of the Porsche 911 RSR.
Their race win was then complimented with the #98 Northwest AMR crew of Paul Dalla Lana, David Pittard and Nicki Thiim coming home third in class to make for a very joyous Aston Martin dominated GTE Am podium celebration at the end.
Sadly, for the #777 D’Station Racing crew of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg, their 24-hour race was to finish well short of that milestone as unrepairable suspension damage claimed the green liveried car during the night with Fagg behind the wheel. On later examination in the garage on Sunday, that failure was confirmed to be well within the fabric of the car and not related to any prior accident of incident with other vehicles nor the crash barrier.
The results of June promoted the #33 crew (except for Chaves who came into the team after the Sebring opener) to the top of the table with 97 points, with the #98 crew just eight points behind in second and with the #777 crew in fifteenth.
This weekend’s visit to Monza will be like Spa Francorchamps, a six-hour race with TF Sport already in the groove at the circuit having been there all week before for the latest round of the European Le Mans Series with their two AMR Vantage GTE’s entered into that with both Chaves and Sorenson also engaged into those customer programmes as well albeit in different cars this time.
Track action begins on Friday morning with the first of two Free Practice sessions before a third and qualifying on Saturday before the green flag to the six hours of Monza starting at 12:00 noon (local) on Sunday.
