Progress to make for both Aston Martins ahead of race two of Asian Le Mans Series opener in Sepang
Saturday, December 07, 2024
With another pair of Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s again helping form another record breaking forty-two all entry (twenty-five of those within the GT class), it was always going to be something of a first day back at school scenario for the #89 Earl Bamber Motorsport and #19 Blackthorn AMR entries.
With both private testing and then Free Practice already behind them, today also saw the teams allotted driver take part within a qualifying session that would see their best and second-best lap times taken to form the grids for today’s opener as well as tomorrows second four-hour race.
For both Anderson Tanoto aboard the #89 EBM car and Jason Ambrose aboard the #19 Blackthorn entry, their best lap times apiece were worth of at best a P17 starting position for Tanoto and P24 in class for Ambrose.
When race one finally got underway earlier today under ‘clear blue skies and sunshine’, the significance of any qualifying position was soon again demonstrated as incidences into turns 1 and 2 of the opening laps saw many cars incur damage with some even having their race ended after contact from others having been spun around through no real fault of the own.
The opening hour or so of the new season would see a plethora of Virtual Safety Car and direct Safety Car inventions take place as various incidents took place around the abrasive 3.44-mile circuit – all of which thankfully avoided the inclusion of either Aston Martin.
When race one finally got underway earlier today under ‘clear blue skies and sunshine’, the significance of any qualifying position was soon again demonstrated as incidences into turns 1 and 2 of the opening laps saw many cars incur damage with some even having their race ended after contact from others having been spun around through no real fault of the own.
The opening hour or so of the new season would see a plethora of Virtual Safety Car and direct Safety Car inventions take place as various incidents took place around the abrasive 3.44-mile circuit – all of which thankfully avoided the inclusion of either Aston Martin.
With some big names aboard many of the other GT Class entries, we had hoped that the #89 EBM car of Tanoto, Brenden Leitch and Marco Sorensen would have a dramatic performance advantage over the #19 Blackthorn entry of Ambrose, Claude Bovet and David McDonald although that was clearly the case as the #19 car ran a strategy programme non-reactive to track events like the EBM car did for much of the opening half of the race.
Indeed, at times, the #89 car looked quite the handful on track as whilst the undertook many a fight within class throughout the race, that was usually in defence of their position before the inevitable pass and demotion in track position despite having claimed as high as P4 at points during the race.
The #19 Blackthorn car meanwhile, sadly achieved little airtime upon the live stream from the circuit as they remained within the tail runners in class for much of the race – nothing outrageous or derogatory their considering their mixed group of drivers compared to their peers.
The race would end with just as much excitement as it started as the P3 finishing Ferrari was later adjudged to have exceeded their finishing drivers maximum drive time (albeit by just 4.5 seconds) for the #89 EBM car to finish P26 overall and P11 in class whilst the #19 finished P32 overall and P17 in class – sadly both outside the allocation of championship points.
Race two of the opening weekend takes place tomorrow (Sunday) before moving onto both Dubai and Abu Dhabi in early 2025. We still await to hear if their will be any Balance of Performance changes within the GT class ahead of race two.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
