Last weekend’s hectic schedule of motor racing also witnessed a whole host of Aston Martin Racing powered success for the many Partner and Customer teams around the world.
Germany proved itself to be the busiest as far AMR powered teams were concerned as the Nordschleife Langstrecken Serie ran its second-round four-hour affair from the notorious ‘Green Hell’ circuit whilst both the DTM and event supporting GT4 Germany Series opened their 2025 account from Oschersleben.
Three Vantage GT3’s and three Vantage GT4’s competed within the NLS including the racing debut of last season’s new Evo version from the Walkenhorst team as well as both a 17A variant and GT8R version of GT4 from the locally based Prosport Racing team.
Whilst the two Prosport entries were both full season, most eyes were upon the #34 Walkenhorst SP9 Pro entry of Mattias Drudi and Christian Krognes as they prepared for the teams full Pro entry into this year’s 24 hours later this year. They did that in style with a P2 finish overall at the end of this four-hour race with the teams SP9 Pro-Am entry also taking a P3 finish in class. Whilst the #36 Walkenhorst SP9 Am class entry and the #191 Walkenhorst SP10 GT4 entry failed to finish or were not classified, the #175 Prosport car did secure another P3 in class with the #140 sister car in P8.
That overall great news was sadly in contrast to racing fortunes of the Belgian based Comtoyou Racing team within this year’s DTM series for its young driver line up of Nicolas Baerts and Gilles Magnes from Oschersleben.
With a field of twenty-four cars, the #007 of Magnes and the #008 of Baerts at least avoided being ‘tail end Charlies’ for the opening race of the season but failing to be weighed at the end of it did get both disqualified from the results.
Race two didn’t exactly go much better as although Magnes eventually secured a P21 finish, Baerts failed to finish as the series now looks to its next round at the Lausitzring at the end of May.
Fortunately leaving Germany in a happy note, we also saw the opening two rounds of the ADAC GT4 Germany Series. Prosport Racing were on double race duties with the sole pair of Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4’s that saw their former champion in Hugo Sasse return to the fold with Pole position for the season opener. Unfortunately, illness struck down Anton Abee aboard the sister #17 for that opener so it was left to both Sasse and co-driver Roman Fellner-Feldegg for the opening race after which the crew delivered a P3 finish for their efforts.
Race two saw both cars return with the #17 car of Abee and Marek Bockmann outperforming their sister car with both taking P2 and P3 qualifying positions. By the end of that hour long race the #19 car had secured another visit to the podium (again) in P3 whilst the #17 car had recovered the situation somewhat with valuable championship points with a P6 finish.
This series now gets a slightly longer break before its next round from the Norisring at the start of July.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media