Two more Aston Martin Racing powered teams continued the racing trend this weekend by competing their race earlier today with a class podium finish apiece as the International GT Open Series ran their elongated 500km penultimate round to their season from the Temple of Speed.
Having skipped the last round to concentrate upon some domestic racing commitment within Poland saw the return of the #14 Good Speed Racing team and their AMR Vantage GT3 for their drivers Piotr Wira and new recruit Dennis Waszek as they continued their Am class campaign with their new for 2026 car.
Joining them and continuing their own championship challenge for the GT3 Pro-Am class was again the #97 Blackthorn AMR Vantage GT3 of Charles Bateman as he was again joined by AMR factory driver Henrique Chaves seeing that ‘his usual’ AMR factory (Jonny Adam) was otherwise engaged in Japan with the FIA World Endurance Championship.
Ahead of Sunday’s one-hundred-and-seventy-five-minute race had seen the #97 lay claim to a class pole setting qualifying performance, P8 overall within the total entry of thirty-four cars whilst the #14 car ended Saturday’s track activity with a total time worthy of P24 overall, P4 within the Am class.
Getting underway with a clean start throughout the ranks, the #97 of Bateman was able to maintain its class lead by some margin whilst Wira was still battling away fifth in class towards the rear of the pack as a Safety Car for a unsurprising multi-car incident in turn one slowed things back down again after just twenty minutes of racing.
Getting back to green again, another car spinning out just in front of the #14 Aston Martin brought out the Safety Car again as it was now stranded in the gravel and that forced the postponement of the pit stop window. With the stops soon over, Chaves was able to rejoin still in the lead of Pro-Am whilst Waszek was also now in the final podium position in Am with still half the race time still to go.
A third Safety Car for a car in the tyre wall again slowed matters down but obviously also closed the gaps back up again as the second drivers would soon have to hand the cars back over top those who started them before that process was repeated again later on, leaving just over forty-eight minutes to go.
For the #97 Blackthorn crew, that meant for a near lights to flag class win with Pro-Am, a result that now places Bateman at the head of the class with just the two sprint races from Barcelona to come in a few weeks’ time. For the #14 Good Speed Racing AMR crew, their visit to Monza proved itself to be very productive as they eventually finished third in class.
Photo credits – Team / Series
