A slightly enlarged Aston Martin powered line up ahead of GT4 Americas visit to CoTA

Like their GT4 series before them, the GT4 America Series also returns to the racetrack of the Circuit of The Americas this weekend for their third round of the 2023 season so far.

Heavily affected by the weather conditions of the last round of Nola Motorsport Park last time out when they ‘lost’ their second race of the weekend as a consequence, the only difference to the previous round to this one is that we expect the #2 Flying Lizard car of Jason Bell to return to the GT4 America stage for the first time this year with co-driver Michael Cooper.

Having originally elected to opt out of a GT America – GT4 America programme this year, Bell obviously feels that he needs the additional seat time that a dual programme offers to keep his solo driver GT America chances alive against a highly competitive (and successful so far) Ross Chouest.

In a new season no longer allowing the Aston Martin Racing contingent dominate the classes, these eight Vantage GT4 crews will again have their work cut out if any are to be successful in either the Pro-Am or Am classes.

Last time out at Nola, the #25 Heart of Racing AMR of Gray Newell and Roman de Angelis fulfilled a debut race win together but that was unfortunately thanks to the number and length of Safety Car periods during that opening hour-long race and with race 2 being washed out, that was as far as things would go down near New Orleans.

Whilst the #24 Heart car stole the top honours in that class, the two young ladies aboard the sister #26 Heart car (Hannah Grisham/ Rianna O’Meara-Hunt) headed home the Aston Martin powered runners within the Am Class, coming home in P4 and much further ahead of their stable mates in class from the #77 TR3 and #428 Van Der Steur teams with Paul Kiebler/Jon Branam and Brady Behrman/Coby Shields respectively but with qualifying and track position at the start of the first FCY dictating most – not much can be drawn from that.

That leaves the #8 Flying Lizard car of Elias Sabo/Andy Lee, the #50 Chouest Povoledo car of their namesakes and the #69 Archangel car of Todd Coleman and Billy Johnson all eager to get back onto better race finishing ways but with three AMR teams still within the top five in Pro-Am, there isn’t too much to be concerned about going into this weekend.

Like usual, Free Practice will take place on Saturday with Qualifying and Race 1 later in the day before things get concluded (fingers crossed this time) with race 2 on Sunday.

Photo credits – Teams / Series