Last weekend's racing round up in brief

The ‘pick of the crop’ would have to be the Racing Spirit of Lemans much deserved podium finish after the second round of their European Le Mans Series endeavours at the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France.

Having qualified their #59 AMR Vantage LMGT3 fourth in class, the driver combo of Derek DeBoer, Casper Stevenson and Valentin Hasse-Clot ended that four-hour race third in class to lift their championship position up to fifth in class at this early stage. 

The #97 Grid Motorsport by TF AMR Vantage LMGT3 of Martin Berry, Lorcan Hanafin and Jonny Adam enjoyed something of a better race weekend than that of Barcelona last month as the team had to prepare a new chassis for the team for this weekend after the horrors of Spain. Unfortunately for them, their combined efforts only earned them another P7 finish in class to now sit P9 in class.

Within the supporting Le Mans Cup Series, the Blackthorn AMR team ran their first race within the series for drivers Claude Bovet and David McDonald after they had to sit out their opening round in Spain due to then unavailability of new chassis parts.

Running on back-to-back race weekends with the British GT Championship, this race was the first time that the team had encountered the latest Michelin control tyre over that of the Pirelli in SRO Series, which brought problems of its own ahead of last weekend’s second round. The #91 car would eventually finish P9 in class.

Similar tyre issues were apparent for the D’Station Racing AMR Vantage GT3 of Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg (deputising for Marco Sorenson) as they raced at the second round of the Super GT Series from Fuji.

Having Qualified P22 out of twenty-seven GT300 entries, the #777 car would eventually finish P16 in class but a lap down to the class leaders.

There were race debuts for new AMR powered crews in both the Thailand Super Series opener at the Chang International was well as for Lazarus Corse in the Italian GT Series within their older specification Vantage GT4 and GT3 chassis respectively.

Competing within the Earl Bamber Motorsport prepared Team New Zealand Vantage GT4, drivers Graham Orsett and Ananthorn Tangniannatchi endured something of a challenge race weekend, eventually finishing P12 in their fourteen strong class in race one before a DNF in race 2.

In Misano meanwhile, the Lazarus Corse AMR of Mattia Di Guisto and William Alatalo ran an improving race weekend, finishing P18 in race one before an improved P12 out of their twenty-three strong grid.

At the end of all of that, we still had Aston Martin entries within the SRO America GT America, GT4 America and GT World Challenge America Series from Sebring International in Florida.

Like the opening rounds at Sonoma last month, these series are bolstered by the presence of the Heart of Racing, Flying Lizard and Prosport Racing teams and their varying AMR Vantage GT3 and GT4 cars.

Within the topflight GT World Challenge Series, just the #8 Flying Lizard Vantage GT3 of Elias Sabo and Andy Lee took part despite early indications that Jason Bell would race within that series alongside AMR factory driver Henrique Chaves. Instead, Bell used Chaves’ knowledge to help his own development within the solo driven GT America Series. The #8 car only managed a P6 in class finish at the end of race 1 before another DNF ended their weekend early.

As previously posted, the Heart of Racing team came away from Sebring with a hat trick of race podiums within their GT4 series as Gray Newell, Newell and Roman De Angelis with Hannah Grisham and Hannah Greenameier all secured class podiums throughout the two-race weekend.

For the remaining AMR entries of Tim Savage (#007 GT America) and Todd Pariott (#13 GT America) each suffered either driver through penalties for incident responsibility or mechanical damage after contact with other cars that blighted their weekend. Hopefully better will come for all concerned later this year.