Five Aston Martin Racing powered crews will convene around at the Nurburgring Nordschleife circuit this weekend for the two ADAC Ravenol N24 Qualification races around the infamous circuit.

Unsurprisingly, all five crews are from the Prosport Racing and Walkenhorst Motorsport teams with the former running their pair of older 16A iteration of platform whilst the latter run a trio of Evo versions.

At the last NLS round we only had the single Prosport entry but that was simply because the Walkenhorst team were busy in the south of France getting ready for the opening six-hour round of the GT World Challenge Endurance Cup Series.

 

That being said, one of the overall winners within the #007 Comtoyou Racing AMR Vantage GT3’s in that event will be swapping allegiances to the Walkenhorst team for these qualification races and indeed twenty-four hour itself as Nicki Thiim partners Christian Krognes with the #34 SP9 entry. They will then be joined by third man Mattai Drudi at the 24 but he is already busy this weekend at the FIA WEC opener in Italy.

The team’s second N24 entry within their #35 car will also be present around the Green Hell this weekend as drivers Mateo Villagomez, Felipe Fernandez-Laser, Dennis Fetzer and Stefan Aust team up togther for the first time.

A third team entry for team boss Henry Walknehorst, Nico Hantke, Anders Buchardt and Mex Jansen will also be involved within the teams #39 car. We don’t know about any special livery this time around after the colourful charity fundraiser example of last season.

 

The locally based Prosport Racing team will also be fielding two AMR Vantage GT3 crews this weekend although they are only down for having one within the main event in mid-May. The entry list for this weekend also list drivers within both cars so it’s all rather confusing at the moment with father and son Maxime and Guido Dumarey part of the N24 entry but with Marek Bockmann, Tobias Wahl, Maik Ronnefarth and Markus Lonnroth all in support somewhere across the two cars.

This weekend’s event will be made up of two four-hour races – one on Saturday and the other on Sunday.

Photo credits – Teams / social media

 

 

 

Thirty-six hours of endurance racing so far and the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship takes to its first sprint race of the season as just the GTP and GTD classes travel to the street circuit layout of Long Beach, California.

At both the season opening Rolex 24 and then the 12Hrs of Sebring, the Heart of Racing team will be stretched resource wise as they field both their Valkyrie GTP and GTD class leading Vantage GTD in IMSA as well as four cars at the opening round to the FIA World Endurance Championship at Imola, Italy.

 

As consequence of that diary clash, there has been a driver reshuffle within the #27 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GTD as Brazilian racer Eduardo Barrichello sits out the FIA WEC opening race weekend to continue his so far fine form within the IMSA series alongside that of stand-in co-driver Spencer Pumpelly.

His co-drivers so far at both opening endurance rounds will also be competing in Italy as Tom Gamble races their #007 Valkyrie and Zacharie Robichon the #27 Vantage LMGT3 in Europe.

 

They will be joined by the teams full season #23 Aston Martin Valkyrie GTP of Ross Gunn and Roman De Angelis who have struggled with technical woes during the opening two rounds to have something of a faltered start to the season with a tight and twisting street circuit layout that didn’t suit the power delivery characteristics of the normally aspirated V12 powerplant over that of its hybridised competitors.

Despite that, last year saw the car and drivers finish eighth overall in what was only their second race of the season (having skipped the Daytona) whilst the then Casper Stevenson/Tom Gamble #23 car had to make do with a P9 class finish after earlier contact.

Joining these two Aston Martin’s will also be the #19 Van Der Steur Racing AMR Vantage GTD of both Rory Van Der Steur and Valentin Hasse-Clot as both drivers debut around the Californian street circuit within their #19 car.

The opening two rounds for this time have been ‘difficult’ with a P11 finish in class at Daytona being their best result to date after suffering from gearbox issues over the bumps of Sebring last time out in March so a good result this weekend will be a boost for all concerned.

 

Eleven GTP’s and seventeen GTD’s will take the start to Saturday’s one hour and forty-minute sprint where caution periods are all but guaranteed with which team can react the best and fastest to those situations usually the one who comes off best in class.

Saturday’s race starts at 16:05hrs local.

Photo credits – Team / Series / Aston Martin

 

 

 

 

Blink and you would have missed it as the FIA World Endurance Championship completed its mandatory Prologue test at Imola today having been forced to do so from global events.

Whilst we would have been pleased to say that all passed off without incident for the Heart of Racing team, that would sadly not be the case after Marco Sorensen suffered a heavy off in his #008 Aston Martin Valkyrie Hypercar during the wet morning session.

 

Without knowing too much about causation, the green V12 powered monster was seen spinning through the gravel before connecting heavily with the tyre protected circuit barrier causing significant damage to the car.

Whilst the Dane was able to extricate himself from the car and after mandatory medical assistance, was fortunately deemed fit to continue with the upcoming race weekend but the same couldn’t be said for the #009 car with the team now working hard to build up a new car utilising their spare monocoque in time for Fridays first Free Practice session.

 

Meanwhile, their sister #007 Hypercar of Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble got in the laps and hence valuable data during the eight hours of track availability finishing the day just outside of the top ten within an extended class of seventeen cars.

It was better news however, across the team garage to where both Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3’s are prepared as Mattia Drudi powered the #27 car that he shares with Zacharie Robichon and Ian James to the top of the overall class leaderboard.

 

Their sister #23 car of Jonny Adam and a series debuting Kobe Pauwels and Gray Newell also fared well within the wet conditions finishing mid table in the results but with both debutant drivers getting in a decent number of laps between them.

That was of course just testing and the real business will begin on Friday ahead of Qualifying on Saturday and the start of this six-hour race opener at 13:00hrs local.

Photo credits – Teams / AMR / social media

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

A healthy entry of twenty race cars including two full season Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3’s with the International GT Open Series certainly raises a smile at our end as we get to watch another fantastic multi-talented Pro-Am grid do battle across some of Europe’s finest circuits starting this weekend from Portimao, Portugal.

The British based Blackthorn AMR team were first to confirm their full season involvement this time around as gentleman driver Charles Bateman looked to get back into mainstream GT3 racing as he paired up with AMR factory driver Jonny Adam.

 

However, being the popular driver that he is, Adam is already on racing duty this weekend at the opening round of the FIA World Endurance Championship from Imola, Italy so for this round and all other diary clashes – he’s place will be taken by Henrique Chaves as they race within the Pro-Am class.

Joining them is an all-new AMR powered team and crew from the Polish Good Speed Racing team and their two Am class drivers Piotr Wira and Tomas Magdziarz.

Established in 2020, the team have been racing a Mercedes AMG GT3 in various series but this year is their first with the Vantage GT3 so the transition should not be that onerous.

 

The #14 Good Speed Racing AMR will be competing this weekend within a class set of eight entries whilst the #97 Blackthorn will be competing within the more popular twelve strong Pro-Am class

Thursday sees the first track activity with private testing before the sessions get more formal across Friday before Qualifying on Saturday morning ahead of the seventy-minute race opener wrapped up with a further sixty minute race on Sunday.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

 

The trio of Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3’s which will be competing within this weekend’s second round of the 24H Series visit to Spa Francorchamps have now been confirmed.

Naturally, we will be seeing the #90 full season entry from the Spanish based E2P Racing team with their trio of drivers in Pablo Burguera, Oliver Campos and Antonio Sainero.

 

We have already seen that the Belgian based Comtoyou Racing team will be expanding their early 2026 racing endeavours with two additional AMR Vantage GT3’s with their DTM racer Nicolas Baert joining forces with his countrymen Gregory Servais and Xavier Knauf within their #41 entry.

They will now be joined by the returning Tom Coronel and Jan Jaap Van Roon within their #40 car for a second attempt at a GT3 race meeting after their somewhat disastrous debut within the GT Winter Series this year that saw them fail to make either race following an accident during Qualifying for Jaap Van Roon at a rain soaked Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona in mid-March.

 

Whilst this will be just a toe in the water for both Comtoyou Racing entries, it will be serious business again for the E2P Racing crew after they secured a P6 finish in class after the opening 6 plus 6-hour races from Mugello a month ago.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / GT Winter Series

 

 

 

 

 

Last week we saw the ACO rules European Le Mans Series and Michelin Le Mans Cup Series conduct their pre-season Prologue test before their respective opening races of their 2026 seasons from Barcelona, and this week sees the FIA World Endurance Championship undertake the same from Imola, Italy.

This venue should of course have been the second round to the season but (continuing) political and military instability around the area of Qatar saw that venue postponed until later in the year (if possible) with the double duty of both the Prologue and thus opening round to the season moving onto Italy.

 

For many teams, their cars and equipment arrived back from the Middle East just over a week ago, giving them little time to repack and dispatch in time for tomorrow’s Prologue test.

Running both the Hypercar and LMGT3 classes, 2026 will again see two Aston Martin Valkyrie’s from the Heart of Racing team as well as both Aston Martin Racing Vantage LMGT3 entries permitted per manufacturer.

 

The #007 and #009 Valkyrie driver line ups remain unchanged from last year as Harry Tincknell and Tom Gamble pair up again in the former with Alex Riberas and Marco Sorensen within the latter.

It is the same for the #27 HoRT AR Vantage GT3 as Ian James, Zacharie Robichon and Mattia Drudi team up for a second season togther of their own but diary clashes between the FIA WEC and IMSA has seen the HoRT make driver changes between the two series as Eduardo Barrichello runs within the IMSA series at Long Beach this weekend. That gives the young Kobe Pauwels his FIA WEC debut alongside the debuting Gary Newell with a more experienced individual in Le Mans winner Jonny Adam.

 

Tomorrows Prologue will see up to eight hours of running across two sessions before the timetable takes the teams and crews into the opening gambits of round one with the first Free Practice session on Friday.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

 

 

It was a rewarding race weekend for a former The Racers Group Aston Martin Racing V12 Vantage GT3 and its new owner as they competed within the new SRO sanctioned GT3 Revival meeting at Paul Ricard at the weekend.

Assisting the Peter Auto historic racing organising with this GT3 only event, the entry list for this inaugural event swelled to thirty cars on paper although race day did see a couple of cars drop by the wayside.

 

What we did see were four Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3’s, previously owned and raced by others when such V12 powered beasts were allowed to roam where driver Jonathon Mitchell put his former TRG-AMR through its paces to go fastest in Free Practice before securing two overall podium finishes as the end of the two forty-minute races.

There were also entries running the former Salih Yoluc TF Sport ran GT3, a former R-Motorsport car as well as one that has only ever been raced by its present owner.

 

Unfortunately, the photographs made available are not of a high quality despite the number of quality photographers at the circuit to shoot both the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup and GT4 European Series.

Maybe next time as the series now moves onto the Spa Classic at the end of May.

Photo credits – Teams / Series

 

 

It was an encouraging start to the GT4 European Series for the Racing Spirit of Leman team as they fielded the only two Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 cars in this weekend’s opening round from Paul Ricard.

This time running in both the Silver and Pro-Am classes, it was the #74 silver class entry of Pedro Garcia and Clement Seyler who came off best with a pair of P2 class podium finishes at the end of both hour-long races at the circuit today.

 

The sister #72 Pro-Am entered car of Florent Grizaud and GT debutant Louka Desgranges still did themselves proud with a pair of finishes within the thirty-eight strong grid taking a P11 and P12 finish respectively over the two races.

The series will now move onto Monza at the end of May.

Photo credits – Team / Series

 

 

Racing fortunes sadly evaded the Racing Spirit of Leman team earlier today as they transitioned from one ACO rules series to another having just won the GT3 class of the Michelin Le Mans Cup Series with their Aston Martin Racing powered pairing.

Stepping up a notch into their #59 AMR Vantage LMGT3, their all-French crew of Clement Mateu, Marius Fossard and Valentin Hasse-Clot had certainly been pressing all of the right buttons running through Free Practice for the opening round to the 2026 European Le Mans Series from the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona.

Finishing mid-table at the end of Free Practice 1, Mateu climbed the order board during his bronze driver test to finish second fastest before the trio went on to finish the fastest LMGT3 crew out of the class of fourteen entries as the end of Free Practice 2.

 

Qualifying, however, would see a half a second gap make the difference between pole position and a fourth place starting position for the #59 car.

Sundays start to the opening four-hour race would be its usual chaotic self as two separate incidents into the opening sequence of corners bring out the red flag before the end of the opening lap as over seven LMP2 and LMP3 cars lay strewn across of the circuit in various states of broken.

Losing nearly half an hour to that clean-up operation, it was soon go again for Mateu and the remaining grid as he quickly caught and harassed the then class leading Mercedes for position. Things didn’t matter that a Ferrari works driver soon passed him for position as they still circulated in fourth.

 

 

Things then sadly went from bad to worse as first the #59 made contact with another class rival – spinning that around and before he could get back to pit lane for the upcoming full service and driver change, another error saw the #59 spin backwards into the gravel. No damage but that cost the crew over a lap – something that was then made worse with a drive through penalty for both speeding in the pit lane at that stop and another for the earlier contact with the Porsche at turn 6.

That all but destroyed the #59 cars chances within class irrespective of the driving abilities of the team debuting Fossard and despite the confidence of Hasse-Clot having just won his first Michelin Le Mans Cup Series race with the team and Philipp Sager the day before.

With insufficient wave around possibilities over the next two hours of racing (and despite the constant stream of caution periods all dealt with independently by Race Control), the #59 car and crew would eventually finish round one of the season P37 overall and P10 in class.

 

The calendar now gives the team little over three weeks to gather their thoughts before the next round from Paul Ricard. The car and crew had both the speed and the ability – just that the execution let them down this time so the next race is another race!!

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

 

Emulating the race winning ways of their AMR powered European cousins this weekend, the Japanese based D’Station Racing Aston Martin Racing team went one better than the Comtoyou Racing team at their opening round of their national Super GT Series.

Beating the #7 Comtoyou Racing’s qualifying position by one to secure a season opening pole position within the GT300 class at today’s Okayama opener, the #777 D’Station Racing pairing of Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg went on to run a near lights to flag class win at the end of the 300km race.

 

With weather conditions staying fine over the race weekend, the #777 backed up a good pre-season build up started the officially timed sessions only eighth fastest in Free Practice before going onto shave another 2.4 seconds off that lap time to secure pole position from the #2 Bridgestone tyre shod Toyota.

In a surprisingly clean race, an early stop for fuel for the #777 still saw them come through to the midway stop and driver change in the class lead before Fagg rounded off an otherwise faultless team performance to win the class by over seven seconds.

 

The next round will be from the teams ‘home’ circuit of Fuji Speedway in just over two weeks’ time.

Photo credits – Team / social media

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another steady performance from the locally based Prosport Racing team as both of their Aston Martin Racing powered entries came safely home at the end of today’s third round of the Nurburgring Langstrecken Serie.

Running just a week ahead of the N24 Qualifier double header weekend, the #37 AMR Vantage GT3 entry of father and Son, Maxine and Guido Dumarey were joined by Swedish racer Markus Lonnroth were they were able to complete todays four-hour race third within their SP9 Am class.

The sister #175 AMR Vantage GT4 car of Gustav Bard and Patrick Skoog also di enough to be classified as P6 within their SP10 Am class albeit two laps down to their class winners.

Photo credit – Eric Metzner

 

 

The opening round to the 2026 Michelin Le Mans Cup Series turned out to be one of extremes for the three Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 powered crews earlier today as another combined grid of forty-four LMP3 and GT3 cars took to the Circuit de Catalunya in Spain.

Just days after the official prologue test at the circuit, the weekend’s work from the British based Ecurie Ecosse Blackthorn car of Claude Bovet and Tom Canning would come to a crashing halt after the team owner suffered a heavy impact with the barriers during his earlier bronze driver test.

 

That would see the #91 crew sadly unable compete during today’s earlier Qualifying nor the opening two-hour race despite the team finding pace within their group set from their earlier Prologue performances.

That left both the #11 Code Racing Development AMR of Sebastian Moreno and Nico Hantke as well as the now #10 Racing Spirit of Leman powered duo of last year’s Code Racing Development pairing of Philipp Sager and Valentin Hasse-Clot.

 

 

With the ‘lesser’ driver taking to the track for Qualifying, it would be Moreno within the #11 who would claim the season’s first GT3 Pole Position with a best lap time of 1.3 seconds faster than his nearest class rival as well as being faster than four LMP3 crews. Sager would suffer from losing two lap times due to track limits and would have to make do with a P6 starting position in class.

The race itself would start under somewhat chaotic conditions as a Safety Car was called before the end of lap one after three or four LMP3’s came together in the opening sequence of corners and once that was cleared, the restart quickly lead into another situation that would take out the #10 car through no fault of its own.

 

Whilst consolidating its position at the head of the class having seen the Safety Car just removed, a silly lunge down the inside of the #11 car by the #51 Ferrari would see the Aston Martin spin and end up in the gravel with its aggressor. Whilst the Ferrari was at least able to continue, the most the #11 car was able to do was to limp back to pit lane where it sadly played no further part in the proceedings with unquantified damage.

After all of that, AMR were left with just the #10 car of Sager and Hasse-Clot where the bronze driver ran a calculated stint to enter pit lane at the end of his minimum drive time second in class leaving the second hour to the factory driver.

 

Immediately fast, the Frenchman was soon on the tail of the class leading #17 Ferrari and despite being forced off track momentarily during one overtake attempt had to bide his time before his next which was more successful at the ninety-minute mark.

Doubt would be thrown into the mix as whilst the #17 crew would have an additional ten seconds added to their race time for a FCY procedure fault, the same would soon be applied to the #10 car for the same reason (speeding under FCY by Sager) meaning that Hasse-Clot needed to gap whoever would be P2 in class by more than that at the end to win.

 

Eventually, that was what he was able to do as Hasse-Clot took the GT3 chequered flag to claim their first win of the season as the series now moves onto round two from Paul Ricard, France in just three weeks’ time.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

 

 

 

Rounding off the Aston Martin Racing powered involvement around the world this weekend is another significant GT series kicking off its 2026 campaign as the Japanese Super GT season gets underway at Okayama.

Formerly running as part of an eight-round calendar but some new released by the series earlier in the week saw there long haul to Sepang get postponed indefinitely with the series citing increasing travel costs as the reason.

 

Despite that, the headlining Japanese GT series continues to be in rude health both in the topflight GT500 class as well as the GT3 based GT300 class which is where we will find the D’Station Racing Aston Martin Raving Vantage GT3 again.

This time familiarity will be the case as drivers Tomonobu Fujii and Charlie Fagg reunite for another campaign in the class, something that the team excelled at during the middle of last season before unfortunately falling away at the end after crashing out of an important round.