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

The final round of the 2019 VLN Series takes place this weekend from the infamous Nordschleife circuit with this time a pair of new Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's seeing out the season.

Having narrowly missed out on the Blancpain GT Endurance Cup Am Class title together in their Garage 59 AMR Vantage GT3 sees both Alex West and Chris Goodwin race together (? for the first time at this venue we want to say?) in one of the green liveried AMR Performance Centres GT4's (again querying fo the first time for West) for the final four hours of racing around the near twenty-six kilometre circuit in the #156 car that both Martin and Alex Brundle shared to a class podium in VLN7.



Whilst Goodwin has raced at the circuit many times, most notably of late in the new Vantage GT4 at the ADAC Total N24 event earlier this year when he shared the then #36 car with Darren Turner and Christian Gebhardt, West only qualified for his full VLN Permit earlier this year when he shared the normally aspirated AMR Performance Centre Vantage GT4 with Martin Brundle.

Joining them is a customer entry for the #173 Prosport Performance team are drivers Alex Mies, Mike David Ortmann and Christoph Brauer. A bit of a strange entry this, considering the apparent hostility showed by the Prosport team owner towards AMR in an interview for a German website after his teams own difficult transition over to the the new iteration of Vantage race car in both ADAC GT Masters, ADAC GT4 Germany as well as other series - a fall out that has left all four cars up for sale. The first two drivers named did race together aboard one of their GT4 cars at the penultimate round of the ADAC series at the Nurburgring with great effect so it will be interesting to see if they stay loyal to the team or the brand in the new season.


As usual with all VLN events, private practice is available on the Friday before Qualifying on Saturday morning ahead of a noon start (local) for the four hour race.

Photo credits - Frozenspeed / Garage 59 / Prosport