The Racer Groups last GT World Challenge America dance of the season at Indianapolis this weekend
Monday, October 02, 2023
As usual, all three series are again well populated with thirteen Aston Martin Racing powered crews as many still have championship aspirations to settle before the weekend is out.
Within the headlining GT World Challenge America Series, the closing round to their season is again ran alongside that of the Intercontinental GT Challenge is one eight-hour race format with over twenty-two top quality American and global teams expected to line up for the Saturday start.
The ‘usual’ pairing within the #007 The Racers Group AMR Vantage GT3 of Derek DeBoer and Valentin Hasse-Clot is again restored for the concluding round as they step up to the full eight-hour race with TF Sport European Le Mans Series Vantage GTE racer Ben Tuck.
With we understand as double points being on offer for this single race format (in lieu of the traditional double header of the average race weekend), that gives the #007 a remote possibility of securing the overall Pro-Am Class win come the end of Saturday’s into the night race but only as long as the crew above them fail to score and the #007 take maximum points. DeBoer and the team presently stand third within both the Pro-Am Team and Driver’s Championship table going into the weekend, thirty-six points behind the Crowdstrike by Riley Mercedes AMG GT3 team at the top of the table but only seven points ahead of the ST Racing BMW powered team.
For a season that started for all at Sonoma back in late March with a chassis very new to both the team and driver, the fact that the #007 TRG have done so well is testament to the work put in by various Prodrive supplied engineers and crew as well as the information and guidance passed onto DeBoer by both Ross Gunn and Hasse-Clot having shared the co-driver role between them.
Private testing begins at the circuit on Wednesday before the start of more formally timed sessions starting Thursday with Pre-Qualifying and Qualifying on Friday ahead of a green flag to the race at 12:15pm local on Saturday.
Photo credits – Team / Series / social media / Andrew Lofthouse