Again, competing under intense heat at the Sepang International, the weekend did at least stay dry for the combined GT500 and GT300 runners with both Aston Martins competing within the nineteen strong lower class. The #333 EBM entry benefitted from local knowledge to beat its #777 stablemate during Friday’s Free Practice 2 before the combined driver qualifying process did see the D’Station qualify in P7 whilst the #333 had to make do with P17.

Come the race and whilst the faster GT500 class made off in the distance, the #777 held station during the opening laps for the Japanese driver but appeared not to have the performance needed to move forward as the fifty-two-lap race progressed. Li, meanwhile, kept his first AMR powered lap clean as he mainly diced with his Team EBM Porsche powered counterpart before both pitted just after the halfway stage.

The same continued for both crews within the second half as the success-based balance of Performance continued to hamper the #777 but at least, they were able to come home for some more valuable championship points – eventually finishing in sixth with the #333 finishing P19 and two laps down at the end.

The #777 crew now move up to third within the GT300 class as the series moves back to Japan and its next round from their home track of Fuji Speedway in early August.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media

Still just round three of the 2025 season after previous rounds at both Okayama and Fuji Speedway, this round will see not one but two Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3 crews compete this time around within the GT300 class.

At the opening round of this year’s Nurburgring Langstrecken Serie around the infamous Green Hell, we had crews from both the Prosport Racing and Dorr Motorsport teams racing there on Saturday win both Vantage GT3 and GT4 format.

With Christoph Breuer deputising within the #17 Vantage GT3 for an unavailable Jean Glorieux, he and Maxime Dumarey secured a SP9 Am Class win for their efforts (albeit the sole runner within that class) but to come first – first you must finish!!

With that change in crew left the #37 SP9 Pro class entered Vantage GT3 of Mike David Ortmann short of a driver so ‘resident’ driver coach Nico Verdonck filled that gap for them to claim a highly credible P14 finish in class at the head of the pack.

In the GT4 classes, the #176 Prosport SP10 runner of Gabriela Jilkova, Yevgen Sokolovskiy and Guido Dumarey came home in sixth whilst the SP8T classed #150 Dorr Motorsport entered Vantage GT4 of Ben Dorr and Theo Nouet claimed the top honour in their first NLS event.

Over in New Zealand, the solo AMR Vantage GT8R of Stephen Harrison worked his magic to claim an opening race at Taupo with a win and a fourth (along with a P12 in the hour-long endurance race) to elevate his position up to third in the GT4 table as the series moves onto its finale at Manfield in a month’s time.

Finally in Malaysia, the Sepang 12hr got back under this year after a number of years of enforced sabbatical with the locally based Viper Niza Racing entering their Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT3.

Fresh out of the container (in a sorry state) from its race ending accident in the final round of the Asian Le Mans Series at Yas Marina a few weeks ago, the Douglas Khoo lead team spent several days simply rebuilding the front end of their #65 car to even allow him, Dominic Ang and Jazeman Jaafar to compete this weekend.

Sadly for them, some early spins in the opening stint for Khoo put them back towards the end of the thirteen strong grid to eventually come home in tenth in what was actually an eight hour race!

Photo credits – Teams / Series / E Metzner / Social Media