More AMR powered success after IMSAs visit to VIR at the weekend
Monday, August 25, 2025
The two AMR Vantage GT4’s from both the Rebel Rock Racing and 89X Motorsport teams were perhaps the busiest of all as certainly Frank DePew had three races in that series to compete in with a weather-related cancellation from Canadian Tire Motorsport Park last time out coming back into the weekend’s race programme for him.
Whilst Mike Fitzpatrick and his 89X team probably had a race weekend to forget with early race DNF’s in both forty minute races otherwise spoiling his previous experiences in mainstream GT4 racing of late, DePew would see his yearly tally of podium finishes more than double at the weekend as he secured two P3 podium Bronze Cup finishes in each of race 2 and the CTMSP added race 3 to go with his earlier P4 finish at the start of the weekend.
After that, we had the four regular Michelin Pilot Challenge Series full season entries from the Rebel Rock, Team TGM and Van der Stuer teams amongst the forty strong GS (GT4) and TCR based entry.
A regular two hour race this time around saw the #46 Team TGM car of Paul Holton and Matt Plumb again starting from within the top five with the other three Astons to the rear of the GS pack. This time around, the #46 crew were able to keep their car pointing in the right direction as occasional carnage lead others to do differently to bring their car home in P6 whilst the #71 Rebel Rock entry of DePew and Robin Liddell improved upon their starting position of P16 to end the day P9 – ending a dreadful and unfortunate run of damage induced DNF’s from the last two rounds.
The triumph in class again came from the two Bronze Cup entries of Christine and Ben Sloss in the #15 Van Der Steur entry alongside the #64 Team TGM car of Ted Giovanis and Hugh Plumb who secured another win in class to add to their championship leading tally with the husband and wife duo left to make do with a P3 finish to fall further behind the #46 car with just two races of the season remaining.
The headline event was of course reserved for the GTD only entry of the Weathertech Sportscar Championship meaning that only those within both the GTD Pro and GTD classes were able to run this weekend – mainly because of the design of compactness of the VIR circuit.
That meant both Tom Gamble and Casper Stevenson were back within the #27 Heart of Racing AMR Vantage GT3 Evo again after their bruising experience last time out at Road America a couple of weeks ago.
With the #27 car again fully restored to its racing beauty, saw Stevenson qualify the car P4 in the GTD class ahead of yesterday’s two hours and forty-minute race. This time determined not to get caught up in other people’s incidents and accidents, the #27 pairing drove a solid race to answer their own disappointment of late with a P3 podium finish at the end despite still being bumped down to P11 on the opening lap after heavy contact from behind. That result helped keep alive Stevenson’s GTD drivers championship aspirations with just two races of the season left to go.
Next time out for both the Weathertech Sportscar Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge AMR runners will be from Indianapolis in a month’s time before concluding the season for all series from Petit Le Mans in mid-October.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media
