EIGHT Aston Martin Racing GT4s for opening round of the Michelin Pilot Challenge

Monday, January 23, 2023

Despite the large number of cars that attended last weekend’s Roar before the 24-official test at the Daytona International Speedway, the number of Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4’s that are actually now scheduled to participate within the opening round of the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge now stands at a whopping EIGHT cars.

Bettering last season’s effort with another four cars, the 2023 American GT racing scene as a whole has seen an explosion in customer interest for the now four-year-old chassis as teams look at the successes enjoyed by the last season Michelin Pilot Challenge winners Alan Brynjolfsson and Trent Hindman.

Not all of these crews will be full season entries within the IMSA series again this weekend as many will be using this weekend’s opening four-hour race for some early season racing experience with only the #09 Stoner Car Care entry for Rob Ecklin and Ramin Abdolvahabi being the closest to a returning full season entrant from last year but already, we know this time will be splitting their 2023 season between this and the World Racing League Series.

The #44 Baby Bull AMR entry of Moisey Uretsky and Justin Piscitell (with Michael Cooper for the Daytona opener) are the next longest serving customer but they too split their 2023 endeavours between the IMSA and SRO America based series with only the two new Team TGM Aston Martin’s of Ted Giovanis/Owen Trinkler and Hugh/Matt Plumb being known to be full season entries so far.

New cars from the Archangel team for Todd Coleman/Conrad Grunewald within the #88 car, the #19 Van Der Steur car for Rory Van De Steur/Austin McCusker (and Wyatt Brichacek) and a second Automatic Racing entry for Jim Jonsin/Brett Sandberg (with Tom Long) joining series returnee’s Paul Kiebler and Jon Branam within their TR3 Racing prepared #29 car bring the GS field up to thirty-two cars amongst the fourteen other TCR based cars for Fridays race.

With all bar the #09 Stoner car having been present at last weekend’s official test and with both Uretsky and Coleman having competed solo within the opening races of the new Sportscar Challenge Series, Fridays race will again mark the start of another MPC season not to be missed.