Heart of Racing line up their four cars ahead of this weekends FIA WEC finale in Italy

It will be something of out with the old before they are welcomed in with the new for the Heart of Racing team as they embark on another back-to-back race weekend starting at the Temple of Speed for the final round of the FIA World Endurance Champion this weekend before moving onto Paul Ricard and for their debut within the Asian Le Mans Series.

With both Series very much affected by the ongoing geo-political issues within the Gulf, this weekend’s FIA WEC to Monza should of course have been at their more traditional seasonal swan-song venue of Bahrain but instead the FIA elected for some ‘safer’ venues of both Barcelona (in lieu of Qatar) and Monza for the final two races of the season.

 

For the #27 Heart of Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 crew of Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi, they were still very much in the LMGT3 Drivers Championship title hunt until their arrival at the Circuit de Catalunya where there success ballast versus tyre degradation was such as the crew were otherwise unable to keep their title hunt going.

Eventually being classified a lowly P16 in class at the end of that six hour race, the other results in class meant that the title hunt was otherwise lost to the #33 TF Sport Corvette crew meaning that this weekend’s six hour visit to Italy will be just for pride and continuation of the cross winter race programme that will take their AMR Vantage crews at least into the Asian Le Mans Series next weekend.

 

The sister #23 AMR Vantage LMGT3 crew of Gray Newell, Eduardo Barrichello and Jonny Adam were equally hard-pressed last time out in Spain but they did manage to close the points gap to their sister #27 crew with their P10 finish. They too will be entered within the AsLMS next weekend albeit not all within the same Aston Martin powered entry.

That leaves the return of the team’s two Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar entries for both Tom Gamble and Harry Tincknell aboard the #007 and Marco Sorenson and Alex Riberas within the #009 cars.

 

In Spain, the changing weather conditions around track eventually caught out the #007 car for that to spin out on rain that had collected within a raise kerb to make for a sorry DNF to blot their copybook – their first within another steadily improving season in just the cars second year on track.

The #009 suffered similarly for pace around the highly abrasive Catalunya circuit but this crew did hang on in to claim what is so far, just their third points finish of the season having promised so much earlier on in more recent rounds.

 

Both crews will go into this round with the knowledge of just what improvements are being to be made to the car over the winter months before returning to both the IMSA and WEC series next year for only its third full season of racing but a decent points finish for the #007 crew could see them leapfrog many more established crews at the end.

Thirty-five Hypercar and LMGT3 entries are again confirmed for this season finale with track action starting on Friday with Free Practice 1 before moving into class Qaulifying and Hyperpole on Saturday afternoon with the final race of the year being waved off at 11:00hrs local on Sunday.

Photo credits – DPPI / Team