It was a decent weekends work for the two Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 powered crews within the World Racing Leagues opening eight plus seven-hour event of the season from Eagles Canyon.

The #68 Team Speed Syndicate and #89 89X Motorsport crews again populated a somewhat modest thirty-nine mixed car entry for this weekend’s event with the #89 car crew return a lights to flag class win within their GTO class with the #68 car coming home third in class as well after Saturdays opener.

 

A small but perfectly formed pair of Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4’s will be taking part in this weekend’s opening round of the World Endurance Championship from Eagles Canyon.

Racing another typical eight plus seven-hour race programme over the weekend sees the 89X Motorsport team pick up from where they left off last season despite their new season commitments within the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge Series.

They again race their #89 Vantage alongside the slightly newer Vantage GT4 from the Team Speed Syndicate team who placed their GTO class car at the head of today’s earlier testing session.

Like always, driver line up information is slightly harder to come by but both cars compete within a smaller than usual thirty-nine strong, multi-classed grid.

Photo credits – Team / social media

 

With just under two weeks until Christmas, we have just one more race event happening this weekend with an Aston Martin Racing Partner team involvement as the Earl Bamber Motorsport supported #7 Team NZ Vantage GT4 entry competes within the final round of the Thailand Super Series this weekend from Buriram.

Regular drivers in Kiwi racer gent Graham Dowsett and the young Thai racer Ananthorn Tangniannatchai help to make up the sixteen strong multi-class entry for this season finale within their GT4 Pro entry.

 

Five Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 powered crews are listed within the provisional entry list for this weekend’s final double header round of the World Endurance Championship as another trip to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas has another eight plus seven-hour event awaiting them.

Again, it’s not always the case that those listed arrive or even drive what they say, but the entry list does list another two entries from the 89X Motorsport team with their #89 and #289 Vantage GT4’s whist the TLM Racing outfit list just one with their #172 clientele.

 

It was another decent performance from many of the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crews that took part within the World Racing League’s penultimate round of the season over the infamous bumps of the Sebring International raceway.

Whilst we had listed six such examples within the provisional entry list, the #143 Prosport Competition entry turned out to be within a Porsche in the end but that still left the pair of cars for both the 89X Motorsport and TLM Racing teams plus that from the locally based Automatic Racing team.

There is more multi-classed action from the World Racing League hosting its penultimate round of the season from Sebring with another gruelling eight plus seven-hour race affair over the infamous bumps this weekend.

Within their provisional entry list, the GTO class lists six Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crews competing from the likes of the TLM Racing, Prosport Competition, Automatic Racing and 89X Motorsport stables.

 

Just a quick shout out to all those at Automatic Racing over in Florida who last weekend completed their first race meeting after losing one of their own from cancer.

Competing within the World Racing League’s latest eight plus seven-hour race weekend from Watkins Glen, saw the team’s venerable #909 Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 take part against some much newer machinery and again proved that all that shines is not necessarily gold with a P11 overall finish is Sundays second race.

It was podium success for one of the Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crews at last weekend’s World Racing League visit to Road Atlanta.

Supposedly, the event was supposed to have been another marathon eight plus seven-hour races for the sixty plus strong, multiple classed grid although Mother Nature within the State of Georgia soon had differing ideas as the series set about their second days action on Sunday.

This time featuring both of their AMR Vantage GT4’s, the 89X Motorsport team eventually ended Saturday’s longer race with a P2 overall finish for their #89 car, finishing just one lap down to the eventual winner after a whopping 263 lap run.

Their sister #289 AMR crew also finished within the overall top 10 a further three laps down whilst the #68 Speed Syndicate Aston eventually ended the race fifty-seven laps down (not sure if they were still running or not at that time, whilst the #909 Automatic Racing suffered a DNF.

Sunday’s second race was however, and almost complete washout as torrential rains arrived and made racing completely unachievable, even at the 30mph speeds cars were forced to reduce to when the storm from hit the circuit.

As a result, that seven-hour race was only able to achieve eighty laps here the #289 car was the highest Aston Martin finisher in P9, the #909 Automatic just behind in P11 and the #89 car P13. The #68 would eventually finish P20 overall within the GT) class, four laps down to the winner.

Photo credits – Teams / social media

Whilst the twenty-four hours of Le Mans continues to thrash itself out over in France, the World Racing Leagues own equivalent did likewise as their fifty-six multi-class entry battled it out around the GT infield circuit of Daytona.

With all Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 crews running within the top-flight GTO class, the business of racing got off to at least a good start as the #909 Automatic car claimed Pole Position ahead of yesterday’s fourteen-hour marathon with the #453 Ruckus Racing car close behind in P4.

 

Whilst there is obviously a significant endurance race weekend presently underway in northern France, there will also be another one kicking off later around the Daytona International Speedway as the World Racing League undertake their sixth round of the season with a fourteen-hour bash.

Early indications had shown up to eight Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 teams being entered but that has now dropped to five after the Prosport Competition and second JR111 and Automatic Racing cars fell by the wayside.

 

Completing what we know to be this weekend’s racing events involving Aston Martin Racing powered teams sees three such crews participate within the FARA USA Memorial 300 at the Homestead Miami Speedway circuit.

Jr III Racing will make its World Racing League (WRL) powered by Hagerty debut at Daytona International Speedway June 9-10.

After multiple tests with the platform, the WRL weekend marks the first competitive outing for the Charlotte-based squad with the Aston Martin Vantage GT4. The team has raced at Daytona’s famed road circuit in IMSA competition and is looking forward to returning to the track for its WRL debut.

The June WRL race weekend will include a test day on Friday followed by a 14 hour race on Saturday.

Jr III Racing will enter two Aston Martins into the top WRL class of GTO competition. The No. 48 Safe N Lock Storage Aston Martin Vantage GT4 will be piloted by Marc and Tyler Sharinn and IMSA GT regular Mike Skeen. The sister car of the No. 68 Airbnb entry will see Rina Balogh, Greg Liefooghie and Jr III Racing WeatherTech driver Garett Grist.

“We are excited to get down to Daytona,” said Jr III Racing team owner Billy Glavin. “We help out with the Chandler School when they compete at WRL events, but this will be our first time competing with our own machinery and full crew in the WRL paddock. The competition seems pretty stout, but that should make for some fun and intense racing.”

Jr III Racing has been preparing for its competition effort with the new Aston Martin Vantage program with multiple test days, with one last test at VIRginia International Raceway before heading to Daytona in June.

Jr III Racing will open its shop for the team's first fan day on Thursday, May 25th from 10a to 12p in Mooresville, North Carolina. The team will have merchandise available as well as giveaways. 

All the effort but none of the reward appears to have also been the theme for the four Aston Martin Racing powered teams within last weekend’s World Racing League’s visit to Road America and their demanding nine and seven-hour double headers.

With TLM Racing providing two of the newer, turbo-charged generation of Vantage GT4 with their #172 and #453 Ruckus Racing entries and two of the older, normally aspirated versions of the race car from both the Prosport Competition and Automatic Racing crews, things ended up with a more diverse combination of results as you could ever ask for from their efforts.

When it works – it works but when it doesn’t, it all seems like hard work for no reward and that was what the second round of the 2022 World Racing League Series appeared to be like for the two Aston Martin Racing runners at Barber Motorsports Park last weekend.

With the opening round of the season from NOLA not running according to plan for the Prosport Competition AMR Vantage GT4 team with both technical and accident damage hindering both opening races of the year, it was hoped that last weekend’s 9 + 7-hour races would prove better luck for their driver line up of Dwayne Moses, Nick Pearson and Mark Doran.

Unfortunately again for the team, their #143 car didn’t progress further than the forty third lap of the winners completed two hundred and seventy five lap race – quite why we don’t know but we can see that the car also didn’t make for the start of Sundays shorter seven hour race as a direct consequence. Sporting a new front quarter going into the race and appearing intact at the end of the meeting, we can only surmise that incident or accident was had at some point during the weekend.

That being said, the #909 Automatic Racing entry of Brandon Kidd, Stephen Davison and (?) David Russell did make the best of the opening race on Saturday taking a P5 start through to an overall race win at the end of the day.

Even then, the #909 car suffered the same fate as their stablemates in race 1 with an unsightly DNF being listed against them by the of Sundays race.

Next round of the series will be from Mid-Ohio in early April.

Photo credits - Teams

 

Another GT endurance racing series came to our attention at the weekend as the Prosport Competition team entered one of their older iteration of Aston Martin Racing V8 Vantage GT4 (Grand Am specification) cars into the World Racing League.

Featuring twelve events across their National Championship, Prosport entered their first round of the season (round three at Mid-Ohio) for two back-to-back eight-hour endurance races with a four driver line up aboard their #143 car.

Despite some Balance of Performance gripes ahead of Saturdays eight hours, the #143 soon came through the field of forty-five other cars to lead the race overall for much of the time until brake caliper failure took them behind the wall to deny them a deserved win with just twenty laps remaining.

In Sunday’s race and despite starting from third on the grid sadly saw early technical issues with the former TRG-AMR car that eventually saw it classified as a DNF some 120 laps down to the eventual winner.

The next 8+8hr round of the series is at the Circuit of the America’s at the beginning of May.