A great day at the office for the two Aston Martin teams within British GT
Friday, June 16, 2023
Sadly, just two Aston Martin Racing Vantage crews again this weekend as the #97 Beechdean AMR crew of Andrew Howard and Ross Gunn take care of things within the GT3 class whilst the #23 R-Racing crew of Josh Miller and Seb Hopkins do likewise in GT4.
Three fifty-five-minute track sessions were available to the scheduled thirty-five strong entry, and all took place under intense sunshine – something of a rarity for the Norfolk circuit it sometimes feels but something that was thoroughly welcome for the large crowd who had taken time out to enjoy the visual and audible spectacle.
The morning session saw the #97 crew finish sixth overall behind the pace setting Race Lab McLaren with the #23 GT4 crew doing likewise within their own GT4 Silver class. Getting settled and dialled into both the car and the circuit would have been the object of the exercise there with several of the Prodrive team only just back from a very busy schedule of works at Le Mans.
Second session and a slight time improvement for the #97 crew saw their finishing position drop to P8 overall as others came back stronger after the lunch break but with everyone still running their own programme of course. For the #23 crew, they went to the top of the list within their class albeit not the fastest GT4 on track as the #22 Pro-Am class Century took that honour from them.
Rounding off a productive but zero risk afternoon, the #97 had bounced back up to P6 to end the day with 70 laps under the belts going into tomorrow’s Free Practice and Qualifying sessions. Slightly less with sixty laps split between the youngsters within the #23 car as they continue struggling for pace thanks to their cars lowered BoP for the season so far.
Like always, testing is one think – racing is another as all teams will be keeping an eye onto Sunday’s weather forecast around the circuit with thunderstorms now being widely expected but tomorrow should remain like that of today – definitely ice cream weather!!
