Six of one and half a dozen of the other for the AMR runners racing at Watkins Glen this weekend

This weekend’s visit by the SRO America trilogy of Series to the Watkins Glen International circuit in Upstate New York will have to go down as another one of those events that proved either very fruitful, or it just didn’t for the many Aston Martin Racing powered crews who took part this weekend.

By that we mean that whilst many came away from their respective races with deserved class glory, the others faced torment and – whilst not using the word failure as that is a too strong, there appeared to be little middle ground from which to rebuild for their second race of the weekend or resurgence from those who have already faced adversity at previous rounds.

For the Ian Lacey crew of Drew Staveley and Frank Gannett for example, a duo who were supposed to race their #12 AMR Vantage GT3 within the GT World Challenge America Series, their weekend was over before it had really begun as an undefined issue with the cars fuel cell meant that their car was withdraw from the event just before race 1 on Saturday.

This team have thrown themselves completely in at the deep end after their conversion from GT4 racing and whilst they have struggled at times, their perseverance is to be commended considering the quality of their opposition in that series, so for this to then happen to them – it’s just ‘not fair’!!

In GT America – a series designed around the Bronze rated driver racing solo amongst a field of both GT3 and GT4 cars it was a good weekend for Ross Chouest of the Chouest Povoledo team who secured two P2 GT4 class podiums over the weekend with reigning GTA GT4 Champion Jason Bell also taking a P3 podium in Saturdays opener.

Whilst Bryan Putt and Gray Newell did come close in their Bsport and Heart of Racing Astons in both races, the other four Aston Martins came away with lonely finishes despite their best of efforts.

In the GT4 America Series, all seven AMR’s again competed in these two one-hour affairs with their respective Pro co-drivers and this time it was the #08 Flying Lizard car of Elias Sabo and Andy Lee who took the highest accolades with two P3 finishes in their Pro-Am class whilst Newell and Ian James took an opportunist GT4 Pro-Am class win in race one.

Overall and for the likes of the #50 Chouest Povoledo car, whilst they did well in one series, they came nowhere in the next with only a P10 and a DNF recorded against their GT4 America efforts this weekend whilst the #55 Accelerating Performance car of last time out ‘AMR hero’ Moisey Uretsky with co-driver Justin Piscitell failed to come close to their results of VIR last time around as well. It was a similar tale with Bell and co-driver Andrew Davis in their other races 

What is missing here is of course something called consistency, with cars/drivers/teams going from one extreme to another as the scenery and the race conditions change. For any Pro-Am competition, that is of course just a fact of life as the Pro driver coaches his client to the best of his ability in any given situation.

The teams now have a month until the next round from Road America and the series run in to the end of season event at Indianapolis in October whilst we wait for this weekend’s racing results to be ratified and added to the respective tallies.

Photo credit – Teams / Series