An Aston Martin of many guises

Whilst we wait to see the latest evolution of the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 race car to hit the track of Portimao in Portugal for a two-day Goodyear tyre test, a few conversation points over the weekend certainly put ‘some more meat onto the bones’ for us regarding the car’s finer detail.

With all GT based race cars heavily homologated against it’s road car equivalent, we understand that the timing and secrecy around this test and development programme has indeed been hindered/delayed by the requirements of that road car equivalent pushing back the timings of this new race car.

With that development having started just over a year ago when both Ross Gunn and Maxime Martin hit the tracks of southern Europe testing what turned out to be hidden, internal components of the car, that rate of development only recently ramped up to a position where visual details of the car were only allowed to be released at a recent track testing event at Silverstone a couple of weeks ago.

In between these test sessions (which have usually been abroad) a similar hard sell effort to that of the 2018 variant has also been underway with countless Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTE/GT3 team owners already having sampled the goods. This week’s two-day event in Portugal will be no different with similar Customer and Partner team participation expected.

Whilst the exact technical detail remains a closely guarded secret, we understand that it would be fair to say that all bar the doors and the roof has been changed as each corner and full aero package has been revisited and revised into what we see today. We also understand that the engine and gearbox remain unchanged – mechanically at least although we would expect some form of digital remastering of its controlling software to come into play to cater for this new cars apparent performance improvements.

When asked about any 2024 racing endeavours, one team owner remarked that it was already his car down in Portugal and when we looked at what was on offer at Donington, that was indeed chassis 16A-22-2, the chassis we take it that was written off after an incident last season at Paul Ricard which had to be rebuilt in time for the Spa 24 and not his usual platform.

That means that we already know about the test and development chassis down in Portimao as that car was the original 2017 GTE test bed before being converted into the 2018 GT3 test bed, first seen in public at the Le Mans Festival with Ross Gunn before being run by the Beechdean AMR team and Andrew Howard as his latest  R&D car acquisition from Prodrive.

Was it better than the current model we asked? – “oh, yer!” was the answer, along with a massive smile!

Photo credits – Auto Express