A turbo charged version of the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 has just hit the shores of South Africa in time for the final round of the domestic South Africa GT Series this weekend.

Nothing new in a new iteration AMR competing within that country of course as that accolade went to the Garage 59 team when they competed within the Kyalami 9hrs Intercontinental GT event at Kyalami few years ago, but this news will see the platform move into their domestic GT theatre for the first time.

 

The 2021 motor racing season started with continuing restrictions in track attendance and travel and it sadly looks like it will see out the year that way as well as the last two major GT series of the year suffer further effects of the continuing global situation.

Whilst we were not expecting to see any Aston Martin Racing powered teams there, yesterday should have seen the entry list published for the fourth and final round (having already been scaled back for the same reason) of the Intercontinental GT Challenge next weekend from Kyalami in South Africa. 

 

Today final saw a Provisional entry list issued for next weekend’s final round of the 2020 Intercontinental GT Challenge from Kyalami in South Africa but alas, there is nobody to cheer for from our own side of things!

Having started way back in late January at the opening round from Bathurst Australia, this truly international GT3 Series has obviously been yet another series blighted, reduced in numbers and delayed in time by the ongoing global pandemic to such a degree that next weekend we will see just twelve cars entered, with some racing for the final time as a factory concern and no Aston Martin’s!

Last weekends final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge from the rejuvenated Kyalami race track in South Africa was very much a breath of fresh air in the world of motorsport with all too many events these days taking place at sterile, more heartless and lack lustre venues.

Obviously, the Kyalami of today differs greatly to that of the seventies when Formula 1 commanded and got the admiration of the world at large that it deserved back then even though there were all too many darkened days amongst them. Last weekends event however, was conducted in more notably enjoyable surroundings as the international racing community finally accepted this iconic name back into its fold with local fans in their thousands coming out to catch up on what they had so far been missing.


Whoever devised the day into night Free Practice and the similar nine hour race format was a stroke of genius as having the best the GT3 racing world could offer, all competing on a track brand new to most together with the unpredictable sub-tropical weather that the southern tip of Africa can come up with made the event what is was despite results not going the way of the Aston Martin Racing runners.

Having already contended with some truly remarkable weather patterns moving in across the circuit during the course of Free Practice and Qualifying, the start of the race on Saturday at least started under clear blue skies and increasing track and cockpit temperatures as the twenty eight starters got under way.


For the #188 Garage 59 Pro-Am entry, the race sadly never really got underway as an uncharacteristic gearbox failure aboard their AMR V8 Vantage GT3 sluiced oil onto the rear wheels of the car, putting starting driver Chris Goodwin into a half spin and through the gravel trap before making heavy contact with a sausage kerb with the front end as he began the recovery process to the pits. That was only his third lap!!

That combination of damage at either end of the car would consign them to the garage for the next two hours of the race - effectively ending their podium bid unless they could later complete 70% of the race winners distance. Co-drivers Alex West and Come Ledogar would have to sit patiently for their turn.


Garage 59's misfortunes meanwhile left the reigns of the AMR brand firmly in the hands of the two R-Motorsport GT3's with them having started from a post Qualifying penalised P12 (#76) and P19 (#62) for their starting drivers of Maxime Martin and Hugo de Sadeleer respectively.

Despite both cars competing in the full Pro class, each car carried a non full Pro driver in the form of World Challenge Europe Silver Cup winner De Sadeleer in the #62 and single seater racer but GT rookie Enaam Ahmed in the other. Their performance on track however far from compromised the cars overall performance as the #62 raised itself as high as P2 overall just after the halfway mark with the #76 hovering around P17.


Just as the light began to fade, incidences began to happen on track and the threat of rain before the end of the race began to hold some real likelihood. A huge tyre blowout on the #108 Bentley threw up the need for another FCY following on from one earlier to recover a stricken Lamborghini from the local trio within the National Cup class in what had been a reasonably clean race so far. By then the Garage 59 crew had already worked their wonder on the #188 car with Goodwin already having completed his 'opening stint' before handing over to Alex West for his first laps in the race.

With the clock counting down to just three hours remaining, the #62 car still looked a menacing threat to the leading Porsches as the grey and blue liveried car circulated just 40 seconds back from the leader in P6 having themselves lost track time for an earlier drive through penalty for track limits.

Then everything got turned upon its heads!!


The #108 Bentley that earlier suffered a massive blowout suffered a more significant dilemma as it nosedived heavily into the tyre wall - another FCY was needed to recover it and repair the barrier damage just as the rain began to fall. Not slowly and progressively like we maybe more used to in Europe but with an off to on effect, quickly swamping the track with rivers of water for it to suddenly stop as quick as it had started.

Twenty five minutes behind the Safety Car later and it wasn't looking good for a restart anytime soon as the rain came and went only to return again as progressively longer and intense downpours. This, together with the poor weather forecast for the remaining two hours proved to be the end of the race for the #188 Garage 59 car as it was returned to the garage - not with any technical issue other than not being able to make up its minimum race time to be able to be classified by the chequered flag. They would finish their IGTC finale some 50 laps + short.


For the best part of the next ninety minutes, the remaining field tried to tippy toe around the 5.45km circuit as the thunder, lightning and rain continued to hammer down around the circuit as rivers of flood water washed over the circuit. At times it appeared impossible to simply drive around the circuit at the slowest of speeds yet alone race at any significant speed.
With neither team in any Championship position at this season finale in South Africa anyway, attention has already turned to the 2020 season of the Intercontinental GT Challenge that starts in little over sixty days at the 12hours of Bathurst in Australia at the end of January.

This is where the new AMR Vantage GT3 finally make its full debut in Australia having missed out on homologation rules at this years event.

Whats there not to like about this series?

Photo credits - Garage 59 / R-Motorsport / IGTC

Never having really gone away, it has been a lot of years since we have seen any mainstream international motor racing being beamed around the world onto our TV sets from the historical 4.5km circuit in Kyalami, South Africa.

Whilst hosting the Formula 1 circus for many years in the seventies, it racing history has been  colourful and diverse yet with dark overtones unfortunately taking the limelight from what was always a challenging circuit so it is always good to see new, brighter history being written at this circuit after too many years in the doldrums.

This weekend sees the Intercontinental GT Challenge host its final round of the 2019 season at the now revamped circuit with three Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT3's from two AMR Partner teams taking part in the form of both Garage 59 and R Motorsport for the final nine hours of racing.


From the first track action of yesterday through to the Top 10 shoot out of this afternoon, all three AMR cars have been showing their worth through some truly mesmerising weather conditions around what is an circuit.

The first Practice session of yesterday was conducted from under an incredible sunset, one that would go head to head with the likes of Bathurst and into full darkness with both Pro class R-Motorsport cars figuring prominently with their mixed driver line ups to what we have been previously used to.

The the #76 car, Maxime Martin would be again joined by Jake Dennis but also with the GT debuting Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year finalist's Enaan Ahmed. Their sister #62 would be made up of Marvin Kirchhofer, Ricky Collard and Hugo de Sadeleer - all well known within the team from the teams respective Blancpain GT Series activities of this year.


Joining these and still relatively 'fresh' from the podium finish in the last round of the Challenge series in Suzuka are the #188 Pro-Am Garage 59 crew of Alex West, Chris Goodwin and Come Ledogar.

The grid would be made up of twenty eight cars, most will be competing within the full Pro Class with three Silver, two Pro-Am, three Am class and two national entries including the likes of Charlenes Arangies who previously raced a V12 Vantage GT3 in the National GT arena with great success it must be added.

Moving into the three Qualifying sessions of this afternoon, each driver would have fifteen minutes to post their best time before all three driver times would be totalled and averaged out to determine which top ten cars would go into todays later Top 10 Shoot Out to determine the formation of the start of the grid.


Q1 started on a dry, warm track but had an obviously storm front moving towards the circuit with the forecast of more torrential rain with thunder and lightning probably.

West, Collard and Martin were all out first with the two R-Motorsport cars conducting only a series of installation laps in the first instance whilst West quickly got down to business with half the allotted time gone before either the #62 or #76 had actually set any lap time. Then out of the blue, Martin set the fastest lap of the weekend so far to claim provisional pole by over 0.1 of a second to the then pace setting Honda NSX. Collard would also set a decent lap time to finish in P12 but he would be pinged from track limits, losing his time on that lap to drop down to P26. West would eventually finish P22.

Next up in Q2 and with the rain getting ever closer and lightning now striking the ground in the suburbs around the track were Goodwin, de Sadeleer and Ahmed. Lap times were only showing their own lap times and their accumulative times rather than their times relative to one another in Q2.


On the timing board, all three cars were running in close formation to one another but as the rain began an error from Goodwin caused the rear of his #188 car to come around through the Esses and spin around to become beached on the fringe of the gravel trap forcing the session to be red flagged.

With just a few minutes lost to aid the recovery of the stricken AMR, cars in pit lane were all keen to get going before the rains really arrived - too keen for the #76 car in fact as Ahmed stuck the nose of his car out into the fast lane only for it to be clipped by a passing Audi. That error would ultimately cost them more track position at the end of the session after their unsafe release penalty was applied.

By now the wind and rain had really arrived on track with rain pouring down onto a circuit for of cars on slick tyres and wind ripping off the advertising hoardings as the wind speed hit gusts of nearly 50mph!!!


As a result of that, Q3 would be declared a wet session with headlights and high intensity rear lights all on but not all cars on wets. That quickly became apparent as Nick Tandy understeered his Porsche into the tyre wall to prompt another red flag which at least the remaining drivers to come to their senses to fit wet tyres during the short break.

Now more appropriately attired, it didn't take Dennis too much longer to get going as he battled with two Porsches for the honours of the top three positions - stealing P2 for a time before a last lap lunge from one of them dropped the #76 back down to P3. Still, that was a Top 10 Shoot Out place.

For both Kirchhofer and Ledogar, Q3 wasn't particularly productive for them (for unknown reasons) that left the #62 back towards the rear of the Pro class in P19 and the #188 the fourth placed non Pro car in P22. The #76 would go into the later Top 10 Shoot out for Dennis to finish in P7, 1.117 seconds off the lead pace but a further grid penalty would see that car drop to P12 for tomorrow's race.


Of course, being a nine hour race Qualifying doesn't really mean a lot as it is usually where you finish at the fall of the chequered flag that counts rather than from where you start. The start of the Kyalami 9Hr begins at 13:00hrs (local)

Good luck to you all!

Photo credits - R-Motorsport / Garage 59 / IGTC

The fifth and final round of the 2019 Intercontinental GT Challenge takes place this weekend from the Kyalami race track in South Africa with three examples of the new Aston Martin Racing V98 Vantage GT3 making their way down for Sunday's nine hour spectatcular.

The #188 Garage 59 Pro-Am entry of Alex West, Chris Goodwin and Come Ledogar make their way southwards for this weekend event having worked hard to recover their racing situation by the end of the last round at Suzuka where weather conditions had heavily impacted upon the grids preparations to finally claim a P2 finish in class by the close of that events ten hours of racing.


Joining them at the season's finale are also two examples from Swiss based R-Motorsport fleet featuring AMR's with three of the teams mainstream Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup drivers teaming up with two lesser experienced GT drivers and well as a GT debutant.

Having raced together in the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe Series sees Marvin Kirchhofer reunite with Ricky Collard in the #62 car and they are joined this time by fellow team World Challenge racer and Silver Cup runner up Hugo de Sadeleer.


In the sister #76 car, drivers Maxime Martin and Jake Dennis are joined by Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year nominee and F3 racer Enaam Ahmed for what is thought to be his first racing experience within a top flight GT car following his appraisal laps for the BRDC Award around Silverstone in one of Garage 59's AMR Vantage GT3's last month.


Track action starts this Thursday with up to four hours of Private testing ahead of a further ninety minutes of night testing to see out the day. Friday sees both Pre Qualifying and Qualifying ahead of of the rolling start for the 9 hour race beginning at 13:00hrs local.

Qualifying and the race itself will all be streamed live via the IGTC social media channels.

Photo credits - Blancpain / Garage 59 / R-Motorsport

Last Saturday saw the final round of the German Sports clubs VLN Series from the Nordschliefe with over one hundred and sixty cars again taking part in the final four hour race of the season.

Joining them were two cars from the Aston Martin Racing stable with Partner Team Garage 59 borrowing a Vantage GT4 from the neighbouring AMR Performance Centre and with German based Prosport Performance seeing out their final race with one of their AMR GT4's, both of which (and their two GT3's are now for sale).


For the Garage 59 pairing of Chris Goodwin and Alex West, this was a last chance for them to get in some final seat time ahead of their next event of the year down in Kyalami, South Africa where they will be racing their AMR Vantage GT3 in the final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge Series.

Both Vantage Gt4's ran in differing classes to one another with the #156 AMR Performance Centre car again running in the SP8T Class  (a class that allows small adjustments) as opposed to the #173 Prosport performances SP10 class for 'true' GT4 cars.


Prosport were again running their customer team of Alex Mies and Mike David-Ortmann who had swapped over to the teams AMR Vantage GT4 at the final round of the German ADAC GT4 Germany race from the Nurburgring.

Running to an unspecified agenda - beyond that of just finishing the race, both did finish with the #156 car in P6 overall in SP8T and teh #173 in P5 in SP10.


For both Goodwin and West, they will be joining their own resident Pro driver Come Ledogar in South Africa in just under three weeks time with their #188 Vantage GT3 will make up a field of three Aston Martins (along side two from R-Motorsport) in the expected grid of thirty cars.

Photo credits - Frozenspeed / VLN / Blancpain GT

Where has the season gone?

Seems only last month that three Aston Martin Racing Partner teams started the year off with their new fleet of AMR Vantage GT3's but here we are today - season concluded with one Class title, Team title and one runners up position in another class under their belts at the end after another exciting season of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup racing.

Entered into three out of the available four classes it was the Pro-Am and Am Classes that provided the season accolades this year as Oman Racing with TF Sport secured both the Pro-Am Drivers and Teams Titles at the end of another highly eventful final round in Barcelona at the weekend whilst 2019 AMR convertees Garage 59 secured the runners up position in the Am Class Drivers Championship.


That was a another great result for Tom Ferrier's squad, securing their third overall Championship title of the year so far after class wins in both GT3 and GT4 in the British GT Championship and a great end to the year aboard the new turbo charged era of AMR race car for drivers Ahmad al Harthy, Salih Yoluc and AMR Junior driver Charlie Eastwood.
Successfully defending a slender points lead going into the final round, the TF Sport trio secured both Class titles after another podium finish at the Circuit de Catalunya with an extended winning margin of thirty four points after their closest rivals spun out of Sundays race (and into retirement) during one of the many Safety Car periods.


In the Am Class, P2 was the best that Garage 59 could hope for with drivers Alex West, Chris Goodwin (and a returning Chris Harris) as the former pair had already 'lost out' in the Championship race due to late 'drama' for the #188 car at the Spa 24 which cost the team valuable Championship points. A final P2 podium of the season in Spain, although totally warranted and worthy was small consolation for the team who had put so much into the season.

That of course leaves the three Pro Class entered cars from Garage 59 and R-Motorsport, all of whom endured a 'difficult' transition into the Series with the new Vantage GT3 with both technical difficulty and accident damage preventing the cars from competing yet alone finishing the five races over the course of the year.


The #62 R-Motorsport car of Mathieu Vaxivierre, Matt Parry and Maxime Martin was the most unfortunate bunch of the trio with just a single point being secured at the first race of the year at Monza with the Garage 59 #59 car of Jonny Adam, Andrew Watson and Come Ledogar just above with two points secured. Whereas the #62 suffered from technical issues the #59 suffered from the blight of other peoples accidents directly affecting their own outcomes.

The remaining #76 R-Motorsport Vantage GT3 of Marvin Kirchhofer, Jake Dennis and Alex Lynn (with a little help from Nicki Thiim at the start of the year) was by far the best performing Pro class AMR runner but still with just three points finishes but two being on the podium including their best result of the year at Barcelona where late 'issues' for the cars ahead gifted them a P2 finish to see the year out.


But all of that was just year 1 with the new Vantage GT3.

With working knowledge, data and understanding of how things went across the classes this year, any entries from these teams for the 2020 season will always place them in a better position than where they found themselves at the start of the year with new cars being rushed out of the Prodrive factory leaving the teams little time to test and prepare.

We see potential planning and development going onto 2020 already taking place with both Garage 59 and R-Motorsport continuing their current racing season by entering November's final round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge Series at Kyalami in South Africa.


R-Motorsport are entering two cars - one featuring an existing Blancpain GT Series driver line up of Hugo de Sadeleer, Ricky Collard and Marvin Kirchhofer whilst their second car will have Jake Dennis and Maxime Martin return but with a new young gun in Aston Martin Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year final four nominee and single seater racer Enaan Ahmed. Both of these cars are entered into the Pro class.

For Garage 59, team bosses Alex West and Chris Goodwin return with their Pro driver Come Ledogar aboard their #188 Pro-Am entry yet all will view this final race of the year as another opportunity to further develop their knowledge and understanding of this GT3 platform.


Next up for up for TF Sport is of course this weekends second round of the World Endurance Championship from Fuji in Japan for their AMR Vantage GTE Am line up of Salih Yoluc, Charlie Eastwood and Jonny Adam.

Photo credits - TF Sport / Blancpain / Garage 59

The Garage 59 team fought back from a tough qualifying session to take second place in the Pro-Am class in the 2019 Suzuka 10 Hours. It was a hard race, fought in hot conditions but the team dug in and delivered a trophy at the end of a challenging 10 hours.

Friday’s practice sessions were a wash out for the teams with torrential rain creating rivers on the track. Garage 59 runs the new-for-2019 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 so lost track time can bite when it comes to getting everything right for qualifying.