Scant reward for this weekends Aston Martin Racing powered efforts around the world

With a noticeably fast car compared to those within the thirteen strong grid, two decent finishes within the events two pre-Qualifying races saw the yellow and blue #48 car start from P7 on the grid for the main one-hour race.

With Peklin starting, the #48 was soon challenging for third as the leading Team France Mercedes AMG GT3 scampered off into the distance but all that hard work was to be undone as the Team Brazil Mercedes stuck its nose up the inside of one the Mistral Straight’s chicanes to spin the Aston Martin around.

Losing time and positions, Peklin recovered to P4 as he pitted but more time would unfortunately be lost within that stop too as they crew were to be timed 2.1 seconds under their minimum time making for another visit to the pits for a drive through penalty.

These incidences all but destroyed what had been until then a very respectable first showing within a GT3 car together as the #48 eventually came home in eleventh.

Then over in Thailand at the Chang International Circuit we had the AMR Vantage GT3 and GT4 Vantage from the Viper Niza Racing team embark on only their second event of the Thailand Super Series with their two new Astons have debuted at the Singapore Grand Prix supporting round just a few weeks earlier.

This time round, team boss Douglas Khoo was re-joined back in the garage by former team LMP3 co-pilot Dominic Ang in the GT3 whilst their GT4 was taken over by TCR driver Adam Khalid after Romain Leroux’s debuting double race win in Singapore.

Whilst the #65 Vantage GT3 struggled with clutch issues during Qualifying and later spun during the opening race, the opening race was looking good for Khalid having assumed the lead of the race early on from his P4 start.

However, pushing too hard on his tyres he would himself loose out two places on track before then spinning on the final lap to finally come home eighth overall at the end.

Race two was equally tough for the #65 during race two, coming home this time in nineth whilst Khalid did manage to secure a class third to help the disappointment of his high ballast weight induced tyre issues of race one.

Finally, we had two older generation AMR Vantage GT4’s compete within the World Racing leagues 8+8 Hour event from Sebring last weekend – one from the Prosport Competition team and the other from Florida based Automatic Racing team.

Whilst the #909 Automatic car of Ramin Abdolvahabi and David Russell did claim a P4 finish at the end of Saturdays opener despite running as high as second with an hour to go, a later two lap penalty dropped them down to fifth whilst technical gremlins would also keep them out for the Sunday finale too.

The #46 Prosport car of Mar Doran, Dwayne Moses, Joseph Burris and Jim Cox would suffer their own issues along the way too coming seventh (five laps down) in race one and then seventy-five laps down in race 2.

Photo credits – Teams / Series