Refreshingly nothing to do with the world's ongoing medical issues sees the O'Brien family offer for sale the Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 that young Connor raced along with Jack Butel in last years British GT Championship.

Although originally re-signed with the Optimum Motorsport team for the 2020 season, their change to the McLaren chassis lead to O'Brien switching to the 2019 British GT GT3 and GT4 Championship winning team TF Sport where he now joins up with Patrick Kibble - hence the sale.

Full listing details can be found at https://racecarsdirect.com/Advert/Details/112674/aston-martin-vantage-gt4-2019---chassis-005

Having finished the final race of the 2019 British GT Championship at Donington Park back in September under a cloud of an unfortunate DNF, its great to see Conner O'Brien today announce his intentions to return to the Championship, again with Optimum Motorsport and one of their Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's to see out 'unfinished business' in the GT4 Championship.

Having been partnered with another GT4 debutant in Jack Butel aboard what was then a brand new and unquantified new AMR race car, the young pair of Silver Cup drivers went onto finish P12 in the Silver Cup class having endured a 'difficult' second half of the season in the Championship despite a confidence boosting, podium finishing run out in the GT Open Cup at Silverstone with AMR young gun Charlie Eastwood.


With entries for the 2020 British GT Championship opening at the start of October, we have heard how entry numbers are already approaching the reduced 2020 headcount but todays announcement sees O'Brien join a line up now confirmed in just six other cars so far. The remainder of the entries submitted to the SRO are (as we understand it) simply provisional slots made by the team in the anticipation of further customer interest moving forward before the close of entries early next year.

Commenting on todays news, O'Brien said “I enjoyed last year a great deal and while the start was tricky with the new car, we made great gains as the season progressed. It was superb to have the fantastic support from Aston Martin Racing and the Academy was so helpful. We showed what we could do in qualifying at both Spa and Donington, so we take the year of experience into the coming season with the aim of regular podium finishes.” Welcoming back the long standing Optimum Motorsport customer for another season with the Wakefield based team, team boss Sahun Goff added “We’re delighted to be returning to the British GT Championship with two GT4s. We have a proven championship winning record in this series and we are now entering our third season as an Aston Martin customer team. It is now a proven winning package; so, we head into the series expecting to be challenging for the title. Connor has developed with us, first in Ginettas and is now making great strides in this championship. I’m sure 2020 will see a strong campaign from him.”

Like TF Sport - Optimum Motorsport have also decided to attend an open test day today at the Oulton Park circuit rather than attend the British GT Championship's Media Day event just down the road at Donington Park.

Similarly to TF Sport, they too are all change for 2019 and will be running one example of the new Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3 as well as two examples of the new Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 in this season British GT Championship.


Only last week did the Wakefield based team confirm that their 2018 International GT Open pairing of Ollie Wilkinson and Bradley Ellis would step up to conduct a near parallel race programme in both International GT Open and the British GT Championship aboard their new V8 Vantage GT3 - we say near parallel as there is a clash between the two programmes at the BGT Silverstone round and the GT Open round at Spa Francorchamps.


This pairing (who did race last year with the team in GT Open in their Audi R8) have at least had the chance of a day and bit of initial shakedown testing with their new car in part one of the GT Open winter test from Paul Ricard the week before last. Some good times came back from the duo on day one before a 'new car gremlin' cut them back in track time on the second day.


Two new Vantage GT4's for the team this year as well with three new team members and one stepping up from the teams Ginetta GT5 series entry of 2018. Connor O'Brien takes that monumental step up the race car ladder to GT4 with the team he knows and in a car that he will share with former LMP3 racer Jack Butel. We understand that this pair have only last week collected their car from the Prodrive factory with the second car still outstanding in time to be used at this test.

The second GT4 car was announced last week of including former BGT GT4 Champion Mike Robinson who will be racing with experience GT4 racer Patrick Matthiesen.


So with only one full day of testing under their belts in GT3 and no GT4 testing so far this year, it will be imperative for the team to get in some good track time between now and the start of the season in April - something that they feel that they cannot achieve at the restrictive running of the Championship's Media Day.

Sad for us but perfectly understandable for them!

At least we know about all the liveries!!

Photo credits - Optimum 

First intimated last year, Optimum Motorsport have today finally confirmed the driver line up that will compete aboard the teams second brand new Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 in the forthcoming British GT Championship.

Joining the team's young guns of Connor O'Brien and Jack Butel previous announced by the team some weeks ago will be the more experienced GT racing line up of Mike Robinson and Patrik Matthiesen.


Having first started in the British GT Championship back in 2015, Robinson has won the overall GT4 Championship once and finished runner up once with the Optimum team and their then Ginetta G55 entry before moving away to the McLaren 570S car of Balfe Motorsport last year where he and co driver Graham Johnson again finished in the runners up position.

Danish driver Matthiesen has one year of British GT GT4 experience under his belt from last year where he achieved one race win and a fourth place overall finish in the Championship with his HHC prepared Ginetta G55 as well as success in the 24H Series by Creventic.


Both drivers will add a large degree of knowledge and experience to the team as they embark on their first season running multiple cars again in the Championship.

With the new V8 Vantage GT4 cars now being released to national and European customers it won't be long before we start seeing these guys on track testing.

Driver photo credit - Jacob Ebrey

Straight off the back of TF Sport announcing their four GT4 driver line up for this season's British GT Championship comes a similar confirmation of the first of an expected two GT4 entry from 2018 Champions Optimum Motorsport.

With GT5 graduate Connor O'Brien already having been confirmed with the team a few weeks ago, today finally sees Jerseyman Jack Butel step across from his previous dealings in the LMP3 Cup to be confirmed as the co driver in that car to form another silver-silver pairing.

Todays announcement also sees the first visual indication of any livery on a new 2019 specification V8 Vantage GT4 - and it looks nice!.


Butel is presently out with the Optimum team over in Dubai in preparation for this weekends 24H Series 24 Hour race with the team's Ginetta G55 GT4 as he gets valuable winter seat time as he converts his style of driving back to a less area dependant GT car from that of a prototype. By the sounds of it, Butel (like many of the others) has only had limited seat car aboard the new turbo charged car at the now infamous Oulton Park collective test last year and he (like all the others) is eagerly anticipating the start of pre season testing once the AMR factory have delivered the first batch of cars to their customer teams.

Losing the capacity to compute just how many new variant Aston Martin Racing Vantages there will be at the opening round of the British GT Championship from Oulton Park in April - one thing for sure is that it will be a heck of a season!

Photo credits - Optimum / Jack Butel