With two weeks after having elapsed since the #95 Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GTE crossed the finishing line in Bahrain to claim not just the race but also the FIA World Endurance Cup for GT Drivers, the Young Driver AMR crew were in Vienna last night to claim their spoils.

Within the grand setting of the Imperial Hofburg Palace for the 2016 FIA Prize Giving Ceremony drivers Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorenson were again joined by team principle Jan Struve as they collected their awards from Jean Todt.


Photo credits - FIA

With all pre season formalities now completed, car launch photographs, videos and interviews taken together with colossal amounts of testing completed, emphasis now turns to the 2016 FIA World Endurance Championship proper starting tomorrow morning with day one of the series Prologue at the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France.

With Aston Martin Racing delivering both a single 2016 specification GTE Pro and a single 2015 GTE Am V8 Vantage to the test (as required by the series regulations) this shall give everybody their first chance (on European soil at least) to see just how the 2016 GTE regulations of the Pro class will compare in performance against those the 2015 regulations that will be used in the Amateur class cars. With the AMR cars it will also be interesting to see of any obvious difference in performance between their new Dunlop tyres and those the Michelins as used by their class competitors.


Within the two AMR cars testing (out of the teams three car full season entry) will be Jonny Adam, Marco Sorenson and Fernando Rees in the #97 Pro car alongside Paul Dalla Lana, Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda in the #98 Am car.

Most of the factory's drivers will have already completed a large amount of car mileage in 2016 either at a Dunlop tyre test either in France or Spain or at the factory's official winter test in Valencia. Others will have been competitively racing in other classes of GT cars in other series, so for the crew of the #98 Am car the last week has been a particular busy one.

That leaves drivers Darren Turner, Richie Stanaway and Nicki Thiim are not officially listed as participating within the test although Turner and Thiim may well be there at some point.


The Prologue starts with two test sessions behind closed doors tomorrow (Friday) with a total of eleven hours of track time possible followed by a further two sessions (7 hours of track time) but with public access to both the circuit and paddock on Saturday.

All teams at the test will be careful not to show their full hand in performance just yet as any significant increase in performance there shall result in them receiving a Balance of Performance adjustment in time for Silverstone with that remaining in effect until after the Le Mans 24H.

No true competitive performance will be seen until we get to Silverstone in just over three weeks for round one of the 2016 season.

Photo credits - Aston Martin Racing / WEC

In GTE Pro, both Astons will reduce their base weights by 10kg each whilst in GTE Am the #98 car will be 20kg lighter to its base weight , have 5 litres extra fuel capacity and have a 0.8mm larger engine restrictor to what they finished with in Bahrain.

Whilst they are all good points we have to bear in mind that the Ferrari and Ford are both brand new, turbo charged cars with unknown potential and last years championship winning Porsche has also had some positive allowances!! The Astons, don't forget will all be running on Dunlop's.

Nothing for definite in terms of car performance will be known until qualifying at Silverstone and Round 1 of the 2016 World Endurance Championship in April.

Photo credits - WEC

Having listed only last week that Massive Motorsport's 2016 season will involve an additional driver in the younger brother of Kristian Poulsen, it now appears that a driver change has also had to be made.

Citing business commitments team boss Caspar Elgaard has today announced that Simon Moller can no longer spare the time that entering the 24H Series would require of him and as such has decided to step aside for 2016. His position within the team will be replaced with a very talented and up and coming young Dane Nicolai Sylvest.


Pictures provided by the team show him testing the now 2016 revised Aston Martin Racing V12 Vantage at the official factory test event at Valencia over the last two days. Further pictures also showed Roland Poulsen testing the car for the first time.


In a published statement Elgaard went out of his way to praise Moller in 'thinking more of the team than himself' in making what must have been a very difficult decision.

Massive's 2016 season kicks off in Mugello, Italy in just under three weeks.

Photo credits - Massive Motorsport

Having missed the opening headline 24 hour event of the 2016 FIA International Endurance Series in Dubai, Danish team Massive Motorsport have announced a four driver line for their opening race of the series in Mugello next month.

Continuing to race their Aston Martin Racing V12 Vantage GT3 that they did in last years European Le Mans Series the team have already confirmed that they would switch over to the Creventic 24H Series having learned that the ACO would be dropping the GTC class at the end of 2015.

Their 2016 upgraded SP6 class (GT3) car will again be driven by their ex. ELMS line up of Caspar Elgaard, Simon Moller and Kristian Poulsen who will now also be joined by Kristian's younger brother Roland.

He has raced Porsche's for a number of years in various Danish and German series under the Poulsen Motorsport banner and he is also no stranger to the Creventic Series having finished on the podium at Dubai in 2014.


One problem with the Poulsen brothers will be identifying which one is which when the both have their helmets on - they're very similar designs!!


The 12Hours of Mugello will be over the weekend of the 18-19th March. At this moment in time, no other Aston Martin entry is being listed including that of the Speedworks car of John Gilbert and Devon Modell who suffered their first DNF of their series career in Dubai last month.

Other entries of note would include that of Roald Goethe and Stuart Hall continuing their 24H experience with Ram Racing again but also the names of Christopher Kemp, Thomas Black and Angelos Metaxa, names normally more associated with the team name Vantage Racing and an Aston Martin V8 Vantage GT4 this time driving a Leipert Motorsport  Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo in the SPX Class!

Photo credits - Massive Motorsport / Poulsen Motorsport

The 2016 24H of Dubai saw just two Aston Martin entries, one from defending SP3 champions Global Racing by Speedworks Motorsport and another from JW Bird Motorsport with their GT4.

The Speedworks #227 car would see the return of Devon Model, John Gilbert, Ollie Hancock alongside newcomer Will Schryver whilst the JWB #221 would field a highly competitive driver line up of team regulars Kieran Griffin and Jake Giddings along with 2015 Oman Racing Vantage GT3 pairing of Liam Griffin and Rory Butcher.

With six Ginetta G55 GT4's locking out the first three rows in class on the starting grid  the #221 JWB would start in tenth whilst the Speedworks car would ultimately struggle in qualifying and would start down in twelfth in the highly competitive class of fifteen cars.

Come the start of the race the #221 would quickly dispatched a number of the Ginetta's that started ahead of them to run a very competitive second in class during the opening stints - the #227 Speedworks car would also climb the timing charts and would be up to sixth by the time of the first (of many) Code 60's.


With the long, dark Middle Eastern night soon upon them the #227 Speedworks car experienced a catastrophic failure in the front right quarter that driver Ollie Hancock was reportedly very fortunate to save and be able to recover the car to the pits just before the half way mark. The elongated repairs in the garage would see Shryver exit pit lane down in twelfth.


At the half way point the #221 JWB would be in seventh but 4 laps down to the class leader whilst the #227 Speedworks would be twelfth but 25 laps down relative to the class leader.

With the #221 JWB car, a car that had incidentally 'found its feet' after a dogged year in British GT with Jake Giddings and Kieran Griffin would still be running their own race, moving up and down the timing charts as the stints/caution periods ebbed and flowed. Just after the 16hour mark however minor contact out on track would see the #227 Speedworks car back in the garage, this time with terminal gearbox/transmission failure. A crushing consequence for a team that had been made to work so hard.


Entering into the final hour of the race the #221 JWB still had a battle on its hand for the final step on the class podium with fellow British GT team Optimum Motorsport just 20 seconds behind.

Come the chequered flag however, Optimums own technical challenges would have seen them dropped back to allow the JWB car to finish a highly commendable third in SP3 and on a podium that would also be locked out with British GT GT4 cars and drivers.


Many congratulations to the #221 JWB Motorsport team.

Whilst it is expected that Speedworks are again a full 24H Series entry there are presently no confirmed AMR entries for the next round of the series at Mugello in March.

Photo credits - Creventic / Speedworks / JWB

Since loosing the option of returning to the European Le Mans Series in 2016 with the removal of the GTC class, Danish squad Massive Motorsport have been considering their european GT racing future.

It appears that their appetite of remaining within a Pro/Am racing category will be taking the team to race tracks not yet experienced by the team and drivers within the increasing popular International Endurance Series 24H Series by Creventic and a part series entry for their V12 Aston Martin Racing Vantage in the A6 class.

Entry lists on the Creventic website for the season show that the team have entered both the Mugello and Zandvoort 12hour events so far only.


Whilst the driver line up has yet to be confirmed for the mid March Italian event it is fully expected to involve at least two out of the three drivers who raced within ELMS - they being Caspar Elgaard, Kristian Poulsen and Simon Moller.

With Moller being a Bronze rated driver as well it also does not rule the team out of entering the new Michelin Le Mans Cup series either as a mechanism of achieving a Le Mans 24 entry as well.

Photo credits - ELMS

The 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) season comes to a close for Young Driver AMR at this Saturday’s eight and final round in Bahrain. Young Driver AMR aims to end the season with a good result and for the final round, Nicki Thiim is back in the Aston Martin Racing entered Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin Vantage GTE for the first time since the 24 hours of Le Mans in June. Thiim will form the rapid "Danish Dynamite“ trio with Marco Sørensen and Christoffer Nygaard in the #95 Aston Martin entered in the GTE Pro class, the premier class in GT racing.

Young Driver AMR travels with good memories to the Kingdom of Bahrain. Twelve month ago, the team won the GTE Am world championship title on the track in the desert south of Manama. After the move up to the GTE Pro class, this years season was challenging and the also the final race of the year will be a difficult one. The race will start Saturday afternoon local time and is held in darkness for more then four of its six hours duration. Sand, which is constantly blown from the desert on the track, creates further challenges.

The team struggled for competitiveness after a performance cut made by the organisers for the most recent rounds, but has hope to be more competitive in Bahrain after a rule change, which re-allows Aston Martin to start in the season starting spec. "Finally we were given the power back, this power cut handicapped us in the second part of the season“, Jan Struve of Young Driver AMR says. "Our debut year in the GTE Pro class was not very easy and we are looking to finish our third season in the FIA WEC with a good result. We are allowed to race in the same specification as at the start of the season. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will race at the very front, but we are very confident that we will close the gap to Ferrari and Porsche and hopefully give them a hard race.”

Source material - Yound Driver AMR