Hard graft for the three Aston Martins in Yas Marinas opening Asian Le Mans Series race today
Saturday, February 15, 2025
It what will no doubt go down as perhaps not the cleanest of race events, things got off badly for the GT class after two red flags delayed the proceedings before the #89 Earl Bamber Motorsport AMR of Gabriel Rindone secured a second row start for today’s race in P3 with Giacomo Petrobelli delivering a very credible P9 coming in cold for his first series involvement whilst a returning Anderson Tanoto was P19 out of a starting class of twenty nine cars.
Once on the grid for this afternoon’s opener – things didn’t last too long either as two clashing Porsche’s sent one heavily into the guard rail bringing out an immediate and prolonged red flag to allow for an extensive clean up and repair operation, only getting back to business over an hour later.
With three hours still showing on the race clock, the race finally got back underway but there was soon more carnage on track as the GT Championship leading Mercedes came around the final corner to meet head on a recovering (and championship leading too) LMP3 car taking themselves out of the race and bringing out the Safety Car again.
Having been spun around himself during Qualifying, Tanoto became the guilty party this time as a speculative move or missed braking point allowed his #98 EBM AMR to tag the Car Guy Ferrari into a spin and later fire around a rubbing tyre that forced the Ferrari to pull over. There would a be a drive through penalty for that.
By the halfway stage, the driving duties of each bronze ranked driver was done and it was then over to either silver or gold/platinum drivers to do their thing as each team saw fit. For the podium setting #89 EBM car of last time out, it was back to Jamie Day to maintain the fourth in class that Rindone had worked hard to preserve whilst Petrobelli would hand over to Charles Bateman from P6 and Tanoto over to Brendon Leitch now much lower down in P16.
This time it was Day’s turn to come to the attention of Race Control after an incident with another car that would see the #89 get a drive through penalty of their own and that would hit the team hard in terms of track position whilst persevering with a slightly less powerful AMR Vantage GT3 like they all were after the Dubai results of last week.
As the track side floodlights became more effective in the fading daylight, the race entered its final hour and whilst the #89 was still running P4 in class, the #98 was now comfortably ahead of its stablemate #19 Blackthorn car after they had received two drive through penalties of their own for causing both a collision and exceeding track limits whilst Petrobelli had been aboard.
As the race clock finally elapsed the required four hours, Mattia Drudi brought the #89 EBM a disappointing for them P5 (as it could have been podium challenging again before their DTP) with Marco Sorensen competing another ACO rules race in P13 with the #19 Blackthorn car finally finishing P21.
The cars go again tomorrow for the season finale from Yas Marina and with (sadly) no championship possibilities, the pressures to succeed will be off and their own performances may affect the GT Championship outcome a little further.
Photo credits – Teams / series / social media
