Having temporally parted company as a supporting act for the Blancpain GT Series at their respective second rounds of the season earlier this month, the GT4 European Series again rejoins the headline Blancpain acts at Paul Ricard this weekend for races five and six of the season.

With the seven - now all new 2019 Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's now competing at Paul Ricard, the last round at Brands Hatch will be very difficult for the four AMR teams to replicate with Brands Hatch and Paul Ricard being polar opposites in track types and characteristics now possible favouring the faster McLaren 570's.


Brands Hatch saw PROsport Performance and Academy Motorsport finally open their GT4 European Series podium accounts with Pro Am drivers Tom Wood and Fiona James taking successive P3 finishes over the weekend in their #61 car with Akhil Rabindra and Florian Thoma finally making the flag in race 1 to secure a P2 finish for those guys. In the AM class, the Street Art Racing Car of Clement Seyler and Pascal Bachmann continued to lift the silverware albeit with a reduced field to the other classes and post race penalties and there were notable finishes from the other Street Art Racing and PROsport cars.

For the #62 Academy car of Will Moore and Matt Cowley, track limits in race 1 and accident damage in race 2 blighted their home event into something to forget despite their obvious speed together.


Forty two GT4 cars will grace the grid in southern France for each of the two - one hour races spread across both Saturday and Sunday. The Am class for Paul Ricard more than doubles to seven cars so that will determine just how good class front runners Seyler and Bachmann are in their Street Art Racing Vantage.

'Coming in from the cold' will be the #44 Generation AMR SuperRacing crew of Matt George and James Holder who will finally stop competing solo in the INV class by reason of their out of homologation 2016 specification AMR Vantage GT4 to race one of their two brand new 2019 specification cars that they finally took delivery off after the Brands Hatch weekend.


Track action for these guys begins on Friday morning with the first of two Free Practice sessions before Qualifying and race on each of Saturday and Sunday.

Photo credits - GT4 European Series / Generation AMR

An interesting new concept from Aston Martin was launched under the autumnal sunshine of  Donington Park this morning as existing and potential customers (?) were allowed the opportunity of taking one or two of the marque's sleekest new cars around a race track without incurring the attention of any local Constabulary!

Being labelled as the Aston Martin AMR Track Day Project by company CEO Andy Palmer, this first event of an indicated many allowed a lucky few to put various cars through their paces around the circuit - maybe just to satisfy the inquisitive within or even to persuade them to take on any ambition of a motor racing future whilst having the attention of a select bunch of professional racers on hand.


Whilst we saw (from an unfortunate distance) that the likes of Darren Turner, Jamie Chadwick and Charlie Eastwood were there - in true Aston Martin style - the event was indeed a little more than just a handful of new production cars being on hand as the paddock was obviously extended either way through the company's annuals from a DBR1 right through to a modern day Vulcan!






It would be good to learn more about this project and indeed see more of the cars on track!

Photo credits - Aston Martin / Donington Pk

Its been a busy twenty four hours for Aston Martin Racing over in Le Mans as various announcements have come out from both the team and series, announcements that will help sculpt the path along which the team will follow moving forward - not just in the this 24hour race but as a whole.

First came the news that the ACO had indeed addressed an apparent imbalance with the Balance of Performance across the GTE Pro range where the new Aston Martin Racing GTE received the biggest number of adjustments compared its competitors - an increase in turbo boost across the rev range and a larger  permitted fuel load.


That was all well and good if it hadn't been for the further  incomprehensible adjustments to all the other OEM cars except for the Porsche - which happens to be celebrating a significant anniversary year!

Five seconds is a great deal of time to be able to make up on track and we can already see from this afternoons first (and only) Free Practice session that the two AMR Pro cars have indeed moved forward in lap times - but so have the others so the #95 and #97 cars are still three seconds in arrears. despite the whole wrath of changes in that class.

Only time will tell we suppose ..............................!!


This mornings news from the team was final confirmation of the partnering with Sky as the marques official media partner. Clues to this had been visible for some weeks - the Sky logo was clearly visible on the transporter as AMR visited Snetterton the week before the LM24 Official test for example so although commercially significant, it wasn't front page news!


Sky logos will also be visible on all of the AMR cars entered into the Le Mans 24hours and going further into this new Super-season from the FIA. The V8 Vantage GT4 as driven by Sir Chris Hoy and Martin Brundle in Saturdays Aston Martin Racing Festival will also carrying the logo.


Finally, the most exciting news of the day (or non news to be exact) was the publishing of photos of the new AMR Vantage GT4 and GT3 that both have a physical presence within the Festival paddock but these did not come from the team. We understand that the cars were due to be revealed at 15.30hrs this afternoon but for some reason that didn't take place as apparently planned.


Months ago there had also been some hype as to one of Aston Martin's Valkyrie hyper-cars leading the Festival field around the Circuit de La Sarthe - that doesn't appear to have any degree of reliability anymore so maybe (just maybe) the two latest recruits from the Aston Martin Racing empire will take to the field instead?

We ourselves now have a very early start tomorrow whilst we embark on our annual pilgrimage to Le Mans - let the good times roll!

Photo credits - AMR / Aston-Passion

Forgetting that the final round of the 2017 China GT Championship was moved forward a week by virtue of the annual Communist Party Conference being in session this week, we find that Prodrive supplied another familiar name from the British GT scene to help out the China Equity AMR team.

With Ross Gunn already having made his mark in the previous two rounds at Shanghai and Chengdu it was the turn of MacMillan Racing's Jack Mitchell to help out in the #618 China Equity AMR car in the final two races of the year from the Zhejiang International Circuit in eastern China.


In the footsteps of Gunn, Mitchell and co driver Yang Mengquai placed their V8 Vantage GT4 car on pole for the first race before converting that to a twenty second race win before then going on to claim P2 for the second and final race of the year. Sadly, it was not to be in the second race as Mengquai crashed out on the installation lap in horrible track conditions immediately prior to the start and was hence not classified as a starter.


The results from Zhejiang leave China Equity AMR P2 overall in the GT4 class behind championship winning team - The Winning Team! Customer Team ZEA FEA Racing, who incidentally were able to call apon the driving services of Adderly Fong for last weekend finish P5 overall

Photo credits - China GT

Glancing through the various streams of social media, it was obvious that those at the Goodwood Festival of Speed today (and this weekend to be exact) have had an absolute treat as Aston Martin unleashed some of their latest machinery up that infamous hill.

Using the event to launch their latest extreme track day 'weapon' in the form of the re-engineered and upgraded Vulcan AMR Pro option, the brand also went onto to showcase cars like the Vantage AMR Pro, another car never previously seen run in public till now.


The Vulcan AMR Pro upgrade package is now available to any of the owners of the 24 Vulcan cars that were produced by AML in 2016 and will allow an already monster car experience greater acceleration of the corners as well as greater aerodynamic stability - if it ever needed it.


The even more limited edition AMR Vantage Pro, one of just seven in existence also saw its first public outing today although the lane through the private estate is hardly conducive for any significant pace from any vehicle without paying a hefty price.


Those attending the four day event will also benefit from the spectacle of Aston Martin running a number of their most recent road car editions as well as runs from the #97 Aston Martin Racing Le Mans GTE Pro winning car in the hands of Jonny Adam.

Photo credits - Aston Martin / FOS