2023 ramping up
Friday, January 06, 2023
Nearly a whole week into this New Year and still nothing concrete to post about without upsetting confidence or injecting a bit a guesswork into the equation, but behind the scenes it has been as busy as things get ahead of any new season that starts in just two weeks time.
The closest that we have come to anything formal was a video posted on social media from the American JR III team of them taking delivery of two new Aston Martin Vantage GT4’s.
Seeing that the team ran LMP3’s within the now re-profiled IMSA Sportscar Challenge with a gentleman driver who also once ran an AMR Vantage within the SRO GT4 America Series, it is not beyond the wit of man to think that the team will enter one or two cars of these cars into either that IMSA support series or the Michelin Pilot Challenge Series with GT4’s now permitted within both – but that has of course yet to be confirmed.
Then on the same side of the pond, we learn of up to three new AMR Vantage GT4’s being ordered for another team that run (principally to date) BMW’s within the World Racing League Series. Although one driver has since confirmed that news – the team have not so we will be leaving there in the meantime.
With the opening round of the WRL Series also just two weeks away, we have been informed that their new cars are not expected within the country until the end of the month, so we won’t be seeing them at the opening round at NOLA at least. The entry list does already show an AMR entry from the Automatic Racing team with one of their normally aspirated versions of the car.
In other news, we have seen that the Bullitt Racing team have just dispatched their AMR Vantage GT3 to the Middle East in time for the opening rounds of the Asian Le Mans Series in Dubai early next month but news of Viper Niza’s and Evisu Racing’s driver crews in that series remain unconfirmed.
French team GPA Racing have just launched their new website which details ambitions to run their Vantage GT4 cars in both the FFSA GT4 and GT4 European Series this season.
Finally however, we don’t know what to make of the news today that Paul Dalla Lana is selling off his beautiful Aston Martin GT12. Used by the Canadian to drive himself about at race venues, we have heard little to no information of his intent (or not) to see out the GTE era within the World Endurance Championship with Aston Martin Racing but there’s still plenty of time with that we suppose! It is a lovely car though!!
Photo credits – Teams / Social Media / Duncan Hamilton ROFGO
