It gets worse - the UK motorsport calendar today has been moved back till the end of June 2020 at the earliest so we continue or Instagram based thread.

Please feel free to join in!!

Congratulations go to Matt Nichol-Jones' Academy Motorsport team tonight after having been confirmed as the winners of the inaugural Pit Stop Challenge that the SRO governing body introduced to their GT4 European Series this year.

Used this year as a 'financial incentive' for the crews to get a close as possible to the cars minimum pit stop times, Academy accrued 94 points of the six round season as they serviced their two Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's of Matt Cowley/Will Moore and Tom Wood/Fiona James for which the team will now receive a prize fund of €3000.00.

This award is in addition to the €1500.00 already received by the team for being the closest overall at their home round at Brands Hatch earlier this year.

To compliment the achievement above was that German based Prosport Performance (another AMR Vantage GT4 runner in the Series) finished second overall (just 20 points behind) after their 'difficult' end to their inaugural year with the new AMR.

Photo credit - GT4 European Series

Every year we see many young, ambitious race car drivers move up the ladder or change formulae to compete in GT racing in various racing arenas around the world.

As with most years with the racing season drawing to a conclusion, we start to see a few race cars being listed for sale and that is certainly the case here with Academy Motorsport offering both of their Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4's on RacecarsDirect.com

Having bought both chassis brand new at the start of 2019 their domestic and European challenges in both British GT and GT4 European Series, team boss Matt Nichol Jones has pointed out to us today that selling both chassis #001 and #017 was always his intention and doesn't necessarily mean any move away from the AMR marque.

Indeed, he even went on to confirm that some of his existing drivers have already confirmed a desire to return with the team next year in another AMR. Both cars are available after season end next month.

Full details can be found at https://racecarsdirect.com/Advert/Details/105509/2-x-2019-aston-martin-gt4-cars

Some more gruelling and sometimes painful and expensive races at the penultimate round of the GT4 European Series from Zandvoort were the outcome of their endeavours as just Academy Motorsport and Street Art Racing represented the Aston Martin Racing brand this weekend.

With PROsport Performance deciding to sit out the round in order to bring their AMR Vantage GT4 machinery back up to its expected tip-top condition and Generation AMR SuperRacing already looking ahead to challenges new for 2020, things fell to the two Silver Cup, one Pro-Am and one Am class runners from the British and Belgium teams to hold the flag.


Track and weather conditions at the Dutch coastal circuit were in stark contrast to the heat of Misano with both Free Practice sessions and Qualifying being ran on a cold/wet surface made slipperier with sand and gravel being taken onto the track surface by cars leaving/rejoining the track.

On Saturday, air temperature was struggling to break the 20deg C mark for the start of Race 1 where the #07 Street Art Racing car of Julian Darras was the highest of the four AMR's in P12, the #61 Academy of Tom Wood not far behind in P15 followed by its sister #62 car of Will Moore P19 and Clement Seyler bring up the rear in an uncharacteristic P28.

The first lap around the extremely tight and twisty was with its expected amount of rubbing as the pack slowly established it sequence of order around the racing line with no car really improving or losing out on the their starting position.


Things very quickly however, went wrong for the #61 Walero sponsored car of Wood as some side to side contact with a Mercedes snapped the steering linkage on that side of his Vantage GT4 causing him to become beached in the following gravel trap sending him into early retirement. The performances of the other three AMR's seemed 'sluggish' compared to that of the leading X-Bows, BMW's and Audi leaving little for any of the remaining AMR cars to improve with what they had available to them at the time.

After the pitstop window had cycled through, a change of driver did appear to rejuvenate the trio of AMR's as Julian Darras and Matt Cowley both improved their positions from P14 and P22 to P11 and P12 respectively before an unfortunate spin for Darras towards the end would sent his white car tumbling to P18 at the chequered flag though. Despite all of this, that result would still be a top 10 finish in the Silver Cup for both Moore and Cowley and another P3 podium for Seyler/Bachmann in the Am class.


Race two on Sunday followed must the same route as the first meteorologically - periods of rain followed by sunshine with at least a blustery on shore breeze to help the drying process.

Again the Qualifying process had been sorted amongst the wet/dry track conditions of Saturday with the #07 Street Art Racing car again taking the lead AMR role with Darras starting from P3. Cowley's #62 Academy was P11 whilst Fiona James would see her first racing action of the weekend from P24 in her Pro-Am entry whilst Pascal Bachmann brought up the rear for the AMR runners in P26.


Even before many of the cars had even crossed the start line to take the start of the race, disaster struck the mid pack of the grid as an over excited Mercedes driver violently changed the course of his GT4 from one side of the grid to the other. The trouble was that his lack of 'vision' meant for an obvious collision with the car to his right which in turn collected four other cars as carnage was sent spewing across the track.

With the race immediately red flagged, a total of six former pristine GT4 cars lay battered and bruised with structural components of their cars having been ripped off in the multiple contacts with each other and the barrier. Fortunately, nobody was injured although (when interviewed just after) Fiona James looked obviously shaken by the experience.


Once the debris had been cleared, the grid would be reformed to start (this time) behind the Safety Car for a two lap formation before again being let loose with 59 minutes still remaining on the clock.

Cowley made the most of the restart picking off a couple of quick places to move himself up to P8 whilst Vandenbalck in the #07 car was also looking racey as he hassled for P2. The trouble for Cowley was that he was adjudged to have been in contravention of the Safety Car procedure and that earned him a drive through all but destroying his early promises.

Just before the pit stop window, Darras had found his second wind and was again attacking those in front to recover himself back to his original starting position of P3 before he and the sister #17 car both pitted just two laps after Bachmann had already had to pit for a puncture. Cowley would elect to stay out as long as possible hoping the emptier track would allow him to make up for some time lost.


Then to round things off, the now released #07 car with Jamie Vandenbalck now aboard would be penalised for an unsafe release in the pits and would get a drive through of his own.

At the chequered flag, all three Vantages would finish not too far apart from each other in P15 (#07), P18 (#62) and P19 (#17) but those positions did at least equate to another set of top 10 positions within the Silver Cup for both Street Art Racing and Academy and for the Am #17 entry, this time they actually failed to make it to the podium!


The series now moves onto the Nurburgring in Germany for the final round of the 2019 season. The damage has already been down to those AMR runners in both Silver Cup and Pro-Am but at least Street Art Racing still lead in the Am class and that championship is theirs to lose.

Hopefully we will also see the return of Prosport Performance at their home event at the end of August.

Photo credits - GT4 European Series

Sadly, as one of just eight Aston Martin drivers making their way over to Zandvoort in The Netherlands for this weekends penultimate round of the GT4 European Series, Academy Motorsport's Matt Cowley takes a quick look back into his season racing in GT's for the first time and the difficulties that that has presented.

Having made the transition from an American based series single seater formula last year to be accepted into the new Aston Martin Racing Drivers Academy and race an example of the factory's latest V8 turbo charged Vantage GT4, all has not necessarily been easy for the 21 year old engineering student from Manchester.


"Until the start of this season my racing career so far has been in single seaters; smaller, lighter, more agile and only me to be in the seat behind the wheel.

2019 has been a big change in more ways than one. New circuits, a new and a different size of the car, the way to drive it and of course the sharing of the seat. The Aston Martin Vantage is a great car to drive and the team (Academy Motorsport) and others feel that I have got to grips with it quite quickly, showing the consistently quick pace that can be achieved.
Racing against other marques is fun. Balance of Performance (BoP) is used to help equalise the grid to provide closer racing, which works to some extent but it will always be a difficult judgement to get right all of the time. However, if you keep your head down, stay away from how it works and do what you need to do with getting the car to handle well and drive it at your very best then anything could happen by the chequered flag - no different to driving any other car or doing other things in your life, being the best you can be.

The other change from my single seat days is sharing the car. This gives me a different view on driving. If I made an error in my single seater days it firstly affected me on the track and then the team. Now any error affects the position I hand the car over to my team mate (or vice versa) and the overall results for the team. This doesn’t affect my driving too much as you still need to push for places, driving consistently whilst conserving the tyres, avoiding contact and penalties and bringing the car home for the changeover to Will.

We hoped that the last round at Misano two weeks ago was just a blip in the system for the usual seven Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 contingent as the GT4 European Series moves north this weekend for the penultimate round of their 2019 season from Zandvoort in the Netherlands.

Where as Misano saw five examples of AMR's GT4 finest compete with some degree of success, Zandvoort shall see just two teams of two compete around the 4.3km coastal circuit amongst the declared 30 car entry. Numerically the smallest grid of the series so far having previously enjoyed numbers of up to 42 cars for the round at Paul Ricard in early June, Belgium based Street Art Racing return with their two cars that compete in both the Silver Cup and Am class whilst Worcester based Academy Motorsport also return with their pair of Pro-Am and Silver Cup entries.


Misano wasn't a good round for the #62 Academy car of Will Moore and Matt Cowley as technical issues saw that car retired from the event even before Qualifying had started whilst the sister #61 car had to use a deputising driver to cover for the sickness of full season racer Fiona James alongside Tom Wood.

Hopefully, two clear weeks back at base has allowed the team to pin point and remedy the ailments within the #62 car and allow James to recover physically to a stronger position. We hope to bring you a small piece from Matt Cowley about his transposition into GT racing for single seaters later on.


The other pair from Street Art Racing include Am Class leaders Clement Seyler and Pascal Bachmann who have gone from strength to strength together considering Seyler's previous lack of motor racing experience. Assistance from AMR factory driver Maxime Martin will of course have helped massively. The other Silver Cup pairing of Julien Darras and Jamie Vandenbalck remain the second best AMR runner in the class in tenth and will have to use the remainder of the season as a development exercise after a disastrous season opener at Monza when their brand new car was severely damaged by another car.

Missing are again the #44 car of Generation AMR SuperRacing for unknown reasons but also now both PROsport Performance AMR Vantage GT4 cars are missing. The team have undergone something of an internal transition between series as former team GT4 racer Florian Thoma has moved up to GT3 and has stopped both his prior GT4 European and ADAC GT4 Germany commitments. The team did attempt to transpose the now vacant seat next to Akhil Rabindra with a driver from the other car but technical issues aboard that made their trip to Italy a fruitless exercise - what will happen with the two entries for the last round in Germany we do not yet know.


The team did compete in the 24H Series event at Portimao last weekend but ended with ongoing technical issues during the night. The absence may be just down to needing time to sort the issues out in the workshop rather than making do in the paddock?

Racing again with the Blancpain GT World Challenge Europe series, track activity begins on Friday with two Free Practice sessions ahead of Qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday and Race 2 on Sunday.

Photo credits - GT4 European

The identity of Academy Motorsport's second Aston Martin Racing GT4 finally came to our attention by accident last night when the British GT Championship inadvertently confirmed that both Will Moore and Alex Both-Jones will compete together aboard the team's #62 car. They join Micah Stanley and Ben Hurst in the #61 car who were confirmed by the team some weeks ago.

2019 makes a significant year with Matt Nichol-Jones and his Academy Motorsport team with significant investments being made in new race cars, transporters and garage tools and equipment as he looks to continue with his status of being the biggest customer AMR GT4 team in the European market. This year will see him continue with his parallel race programme in both British GT and GT4 European Series with drivers not yet fully confirmed.


Will Moore is no stranger to the team having raced with Nichol-Jones many times before in the national GT Championship and abroad - he was supposed to have taken a business enforced sabbatical in 2019 but presumably the lure of a brand new AMR GT4 race car was enough for him to think twice. He is joined by former Ginetta GT5 racer Alex Both-Jones - a name you may recall as being first associated with TF Sport at the tail of last year but like all deals, nothing is confirmed until everything is agreed to and signed off by the stakeholders concerned.


The team received their first car from the factory last week (proudly bearing the chassis number #001) which they shook down at Silverstone but move on today the British GT Championship Media Day with just a single car.

Two new cars, three new drivers and a bunch of people who just love to go motor racing - what more is their to life!!

After six months of highly competitive racing around the best of British race tracks plus their annual excursion abroad, the 2018 British GT Championship finally came to a conclusion on Sunday with Aston Martin Racing customer team's and drivers standing tall having claimed four Championship titles at an unsurprisingly eventful 'Donington Decider'.

Optimum Motorsport's Flick Haigh and Jonny Adam completed what they needed to do to secure their place in the Championship's history books with a fourth place finish at the end of the final round's two hour race - enough to win them the overall Championship despite the best efforts of the Barwell and TF Sport rivals who both finished in front of them.


That result also earned Haigh the honour of being the first woman driver to win the overall championship as well as the her previous accolades of being first woman driver to qualify on pole in her own right followed by being the first woman to win the GT3 class race - all achievements that she earned first time out at Oulton Park back in early April and despite treacherous track conditions.


Aston Martin Racing placed co-driver Jonny Adam also earned himself a further entry into his on- going chapter of the Championship by winning his third GT3 crown.


Team Boss Shaun Goff was beyond words as he tried to convey his utmost admiration and respect for his new race pairing that had started on such 'shaky ground' as Haigh nervously first tested her new Vantage GT3 with Adam at a cold and damp Snetterton back in January through to the guts and determination of a driver who was no longer afraid to 'mix it' with more seasoned racers at even the all deciding final round at the weekend! That is not only great credit to the character of the pupil who was willing to learn and develop but also absolute credit to the tutor who has now coached some three amateur drivers to the same prize.


By virtue of Sunday's results Haigh and Adam also claim the 2018 Pro-Am Championship and Haigh the Blancpain Trophy each time just ahead of Barwell's Jon Minshaw and Phil Keen who, for a third time narrowly miss out on the big prize!


The only GT3 Championship that either Haigh, Adam and Optimum didn't win was the GT3 Team Championship as that award went to fellow AMR Customer team, TF Sport who themselves finished just nine points ahead of the Barwell team thanks to a stellar drive from the #11 car of Mark Farmer and Nicki Thiim to finish P2 at Donington after a time penalty had been applied for track limits - they had actually crossed the line first!


With TF Sport, Sunday's race was also the end of an era as Derek Johnston hung up his race suit for the (query) final time however sadly with a bitter taste after having been hit from behind with some force by the #1 Team Parker Racing Bentley sustaining terminal damage to the cars gearbox and forcing a much premature end to his tenure in the British GT paddock. Also as a result of that we didn't get to see Marco Sorensen perform his swan song stint in the car either!


When we (and we know others noticed too) shook Johnston's hand and thanked him for the time, efforts and service to the sport, we saw a slight welling up in his eye's with a ' I only raced a car' as he made a polite exit to the throng that was his family and friends in the TF garage. Somehow - we don't think that it will be too long before he is back in a car somewhere - maybe a selective round return to the Championship maybe but anyway, Johnston will take his car home with him as a keep sake to his AMR/BGT adventures that after all landed him the GT3 Championship title back in 2016.


Both Optimum and TF Sport have already been confirmed as the earlier precipitants of two examples each of the new GT3 and GT4 platforms apiece that we hope the teams will reveal details of in good time.

The final Championship winning performance from the weekend came from someone not directly competing within an AMR car but someone who is very much 'up and coming' with the factory team as Jack Mitchell secured a solo Championship win in his Century Motorsport BMW M4.


Formally with MacMillan AMR, Mitchell is also presently leading the China GT GT4 Championship in the #618 China Equity AMR entry that he did share with Ryan Liu as that series enters its final two events of the season with a street circuit format coming next up in just two weeks time.


For the rest of the Aston Martin Racing customer team contingent, Donington proved to be just as bruising and 'character building' as any previous round of the championship if you believe that rubbing is racing!


Jetstream Motorsport found that the only way past the 'blocking' Barwell Lamborghini was the hard way with a last minute and very elbows out move on the #69 car at the Melbourne hairpin before slipping off the circuit on someone else's oil at turn 1 before returning to the track under the Safety Car for some more panel bashing from others. Drivers Graham Davidson and Maxime Martin would finish the race P11 and the championship in P7 so for their somewhat last minute confirmation into the Championship having never driven the car or having even met each other - that is some achievement that they should all be proud of. They did win the Spa round after all!


For Beechdean AMR, their earlier good start to their return to the domestic GT scene had been hampered by some mid season misfortune so were hoping to round the year off on a high. As a result of Darren Turner's off track excursion during Qualifying, the #99 car that he shares with team boss Andrew Howard started lower down the starting grid than they had first hoped but they still found themselves as being one of the many stuck behind the intentionally slowly Lamborghini.

Despite some very competitive wheel to wheel racing in the opening stages, contact with the Nissan spun both cars around loosing them both a substantial amount of time before both were able to return to the track. After the pitstop it was the turn of Turner to come to the attention of the race officials for track limits earning himself a drive through penalty although he was later able to redeem himself with a multiple overtake to claim the cars finishing position of P5 - the position they also finished in the Championship. We await for news of a 2019 campaign.


The biggest heartache sadly befell the Academy Motorsport crew again and their two V8 Vantage GT4 entries of Will Moore/Matt Nichol-Jones and Jan Jonck/Tom Wood. Having started side by side on the grid and having earlier 'hijacked' the display of the new AMR Vantage GT4, Donington would again be cruel to the them all.

With the shenanigans of the opening lap, the #61 Moore car became embroiled in early contacts within the GT4 field that would leave several cars damaged dropping him down the order whilst local boy Tom Wood would benefit from that to find himself running up to third in class by the time of the Safety Car that was later called for the oil at turn 1. Just before the restart however, the #62 Wood car would suffer a puncture, albeit very close to the pit lane but enough to drop them out of contention.


That bad luck was quickly followed by disaster for the team as the #61 disappeared from the timing screen after apparently suffering engine failure going downteh Craner Curves marking the disappointing end of the season to Moore's/Nichol-Jones' intermittent season. For the other car, Donington would typify their own season of bad luck and misfortune (mostly not of their own making it has to be said) to finish down in P25 - some three laps down to the winning GT4.


All in all 2018 has been a year that Aston Martin Racing could easily showcase as the inaugeral year for their V12 Vantage GT3, claiming multiple podium finsihes throughout the year both in GT3 and GT4. Some teams have already confirmed their acquirement of the new turbo charged car with many more waiting to do similar.

With many national and European seasons now at an end we will have to await the timely announcements of such new race programmes as and when the teams see fit!

Photo credits - Jacob Ebrey / AMR / ChinaGT