Asian Le Mans Series back in business at a solo round in Dubai this weekend
Friday, February 02, 2024
In an expansive change to last season, the Asian Le Mans Series opened its 2023-24 season with two four-hour rounds from Sepang, where the unpredictable weather of Malaysia certainly played its part over that opening weekend back in early December where the second race was eventually red flagged for safety.
There, both the D’Station Racing and TF Sport Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 crews of Satoshi Hoshino, Tomonobu Fujii and Casper Stevenson alongside John Hartshorne, Jonny Adam and Ben Tuck battled it out within a twenty-three strong GT3 class as well as eleven LMP2 and a further five LMP3 cars.
In Dubai, the entry list shows a slightly revised forty-one strong entry list going into yesterday private testing before sessions become a little more formal today with the first Free Practice, ahead of Sunday four-hour race starting at 13:00hrs local.
Still racing the outgoing 16A version of the AMR Vantage GT3, both #77 D’Station Racing and #95 TF Sport again compete with an unchanged line up as both look to improve upon their finishes in Sepang where the #95 was the faster of the two finishing P15 in class in race 1 and P9 in race 2 as opposed to P16 in Race 1 and P17 in race 2 for the #77.
Whilst both Aston’s finished down the lower end of the table during the earlier private testing session, that did all change within FP1 where the #77 shot up to P3 in class and the #95 P15 at the end. But there’s still obviously a long way to go.
Hopefully this weekend the weather will not intervene but even with the desert of Dubai - you just never know these days!!
Photo credits – Series / Team / Andrew Lofthouse
Photo credits – Series / Team / Andrew Lofthouse
