A busy weekend ahead across Europe for many AMR teams

Monday, April 17, 2023

There’s a very busy race weekend coming up as three European based series hold their opening rounds to their 2023 seasons as well as a Qualifying race to one of the most prestigious twenty-hour races around.

Starting in Spain, we have both the start tomorrow of their two-day Prologue test and then opening round two days later for the European Le Mans Series from the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona.

There we will have three Aston Martin Racing powered Vantage GTE’s competing within that series as the TF Sport team travel north from their WEC endeavours last weekend in Portugal with two entries as well as the Danish GMB Motorsport team stepping up to the ELMS with an AMR Vantage GTE for the first time.

With an AMR factory driver within each car (Nikki Thiim/Valentin Hasse-Clot/Jonny Adam) based around pairs of experienced and competent racers, the final year of the GTE platform within the ACO series should prove exciting (again)!!

In support of the ELMS, we have the Le Mans Cup Series featuring a step up in GT class for the Racing Spirit of Le Mans team and featuring a pair of drivers already busy in ELMS duties with TF Sport. Usually associated with Vantage GT4s in both the FFSA GT4 and GT4 European Series, this will be the first time that they have run a Vantage GT3.

Then in Italy, we have the opening rounds of both the GT World Challenge Europe and GT4 European Series within which we will see a solo GT3 effort within the Endurance Cup series for the Spanish based Bullitt Racing who will run a diverse young silver driver line up, full of potential and eager to impress after recent pre-season testing.

In the GT4 European Series we will see one of the biggest AMR Vantage based entry to date since the introduction of the latest version of the GT4 as fifteen crews represent nearly 30% of the expected grid for their two races around the Monza circuit.

Finally, a little bit further north and this weekend will see the running of the annual Nurburgring 24 Qualifying race which will see a number of AMR Vantage GT3 and GT4 crews run again in order to seal their part within the main event in mid-May.

Entries from the locally based Prosport Racing team should see them run this weekend with both a Vantage GT3 and GT4 alongside a further GT3 from the Doer Motorsport team. Whereas the former team have been active throughout the ongoing NLS Series, the Doer teams GT3 has not been seen since an ill-fated NLS 2 run where damage was sustained during Friday testing prevented it from running on race day.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media