A reduced AMR headcount as SRO America travels to Sebring this weekend
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Having each competed last time out at Road America just over three weeks ago, it will however be a slightly reduced Aston Martin Racing customer team representation at these rounds.
Starting in GT3, the Ian Lacey prepared AMR Vantage GT3 of Drew Staveley and Frank Gannett again figure in what has become a smaller combined grid over recent events, with their #12 Pro-Am entry ever improving with age where their technology at least allows them to perform.
Competing in a series filled with Pro entries and Pro-Am combinations to die for, it is not surprising that the former GT4 runners have not been figuring at the sharp end of the race action but have instead been claiming their own small victories where the duo ended Road America with a brace of P7 in class finishes.
For this weekend, its back to Florida for all where they will be competing amongst an expected grid size of eighteen car with eleven of those running in Pro-Am.
Next onto the bronze ranked driver only series of GT America where for Sebring we will not be seeing either the #25 Heart of Racing AMR Vantage GT4 of Gray Newell nor the #888 Zelus Motorsport Vantage GT4 of Sean Whalen. Newell continues to convalesce after his massive incident in the second GT America race at Road America whilst Whalen is apparently struggling with sourcing a suitable replacement chassis/parts after the accident involving with Bryan Putt and Jason Bell in the same race.
That does of course leave us with the #2 GMG Racing and the #50 Chouest Povoledo racing cars of GT4 Drivers Championship protagonists of Jason Bell and Ross Chouest (respectively) as well as the #8 Flying Lizard cart of Elias Sabo, the #15 Bsport car of Putt and the #55 API prepared AMR of Moisey Uretsky.
With the results from Road America still be declared as provisional after the red flagged shortened second race, Bells lead at the top of the GT4 runners from Chouest in second has still been much reduced after his own ‘blue on blue’ incident with his #15 and #888 stablemates in race two where his reaction also cost him a sizeable fine to boot alongside his more costly DNF.
With four races of the year still to go and twenty-five points for a class win – the GT America Series is still open to at least five runners going into Sebring.
That leaves us with the GT4 America Series with an identical picture of who will be at Sebring and who won’t in that series too for the same reasons as stated above.
This time with their results from Road America confirmed, it appears to be something of an uphill battle for either of the Flying Lizard, Bsport Racing or Heart of Racing crews to conquer considering the near dominating performance to date of the #120 Premier Racing Porsche who presently hold onto a fifty-three-point lead over the nearest Aston Martin runner in fifth.
The omission of the #24 Heart of Racing car of Newell and Ian James also effectively takes them out of the running for the GT4 Pro-Am title leaving it to be a two AMR race to battle for the Championship between the #8 Flying Lizard car of Sabo and Andy Lee and the #15 Bsport Racing car of Putt and Kenton Koch but with twenty-five points available per race …….!!
We all know that the bumps of the former war time airfield circuit of Sebring can and often does throw up a curve ball in motorsport – and it will probably do so again this weekend too.
Photo credits – Series / Teams
