Hoping for better fortune in the Asian Le Mans Series as race one fast approaches tomorrow
Friday, February 10, 2023
Hopefully, tomorrow will see the first signs of Aston Martin Racing planetary alignment after a several of our teams suffered both delay and technical woe in their build up to the start of the Asian Le Mans Series from the Dubai Autodrome over the last couple of days.
Firstly last week, we had the Spanish based Bullitt Racing rediscover their containerised Vantage GT3 and pit equipment still standing upon the quayside of their local harbour forcing the Stephen Pattrick lead team to air freight their goods over to the Middle East just in time but at great expense.
Next, we had the heavily delayed arrival of the #95 TF Sport Vantage GT3 of John Hartshorne, Jonny Adam and Henrique Chaves as well as additional pit equipment that would be used by the #61 Evisu Racing Vantage GT3 entry for David Pun, Ross Gunn and Adrian D’Silva.
Missing not only the series photoshoots but also the private test sessions that lead in today’s official track action, that delay obviously compounded their event build up as well did an accident for the #61 car that has today necessitated the need for structural component parts to be flown in overnight from the Prodrive factory to allow that car to continue with its own programme having already missed most of the available sessions today.
Then in the midst of all of that, there have been the technical issues with the #65 Viper Niza AMR of Douglas Khoo and Dominic Ang after they suffered rear hub failures that saw them being the causation of at least two red flags during the day.
At the culmination of todays on track action at the end of Free Practice 2, it was still just the #61 Evisu car not on track but with the others improving but with the #66 Bullitt car of Valentin Hasse-Clot, Jacob Riegel and Martin Berry show their pace finishing the day second fastest, just 0.2 of a second behind the pace setting Mercedes whilst the #77 D’Station Racing AMR of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg ending the day mid table amongst the twenty three other GT class cars.
Tomorrow morning sees the ALMS grid tale on their first Qualifying sessions for both of this weekends races before reforming on the grid for race one four hours later.
Photo credits – A Lofthouse / D Gibson / Teams
