Just three AMR cars remain as the Asian Le Mans reaches Yas Marina and its 2023 finale
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Having rejoiced (briefly) at the spectacle of FIVE Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 compete over the opening race weekend in Dubai, that unfortunately and all too quickly turned sour for many of these AMR teams as first accident damage ruled one out, another was hobbled at the start of the first race for another to be all but destroyed in Sundays second race.
The entry list ahead of this weekend’s affair has indeed confirmed the withdrawal of both the #61 Evisu Racing (TF Sport supported) entry of David Pun, Ross Gunn and Adrian D’Silva after the latter driver suffered a hefty testing crash that caused sufficient damage to the front of their colourfully livered Aston Martin for it not to be repairable to any degree of satisfaction at the circuit.
Unfortunately for all concerned, that meant for an early flight home for all three drivers with Pun now looking into possible ad-hoc GT Open and Le Mans Cup Series entries to fill his season.
Similar frontal damage was also sustained to the #65 Viper Niza AMR of Douglas Khoo and Domonic Ang after the former was ‘run off the track’ by a Ferrari, wiping off the front of the #65 car as well as winding and already injured (from an earlier pit stop incident) Khoo in the process.
Again, the car was later confirmed as effectively a write off by team boss Khoo making for another set of early flights home for the Malaysian based team.
The #66 Bullitt Racing team also faced their own set of tribulations as Martin Berry suffered frontal suspension damage on only the third lap of race one on Saturday, with resulting damage forcing the team to withdraw their car mid race. Private testing today in Yas Marina also highlighted a frontal suspension issue that limited their running for drivers Valentin Hasse-Clot, Berry and Jaco Riegel but at least they have reported progress in today’s latter sessions.
Whilst the #95 TF Sport entry of John Hartshorne, Jonny Adam and Henrique Chaves did at least finish both four-hour races last weekend, their finishing positions of P20 and P13 respectively has left them outside of the points tally for their efforts.
It was to be only the #77 D’Station Racing AMR of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg who would enjoy the benefits of Championship points after their P8 finish in Race 1 (coupled with an out of the points P15 finish in race 2) to now sit tenth in class going into the Yas Marina rounds some considerable distance behind the all winning #34 Walkenhorst Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 crew who secured two lights to flag wins for maximum points in Dubai.
Despite there being attempts to harmonise the performances of many new chassis on track over the Dubai weekend with changes to their respective BoP, there appears to have been no changes to the series Version 2 table from Dubai so far this meeting.
Photo credits Team / AMR / Andrew Lofthouse / social media
