After Aston Martin’s return to F1 we began following the team’s exploits in AM Monthly and AM Quarterly. We now plan to extend our motor racing coverage to sports car racing, where Aston has a long and illustrious history. The structure of this world is a lot more confusing to the casual fan than F1, so this is an attempt to introduce the sport and explain its appeal to fans of motor racing and particularly to AMOC Members.
There are currently two versions of the Vantage competing in international sports car racing. The GT4 version has roughly 80% of its components in common with the road-going Vantage sitting on your drive - which makes it a lot easier to identify with than an F1 car. The faster GT3 race car has a majority of race-spec components, but both cars share the body shell produced on the Vantage line at the Gaydon factory. Those bodies are built up into race cars by Prodrive in Banbury who have been running the Aston Martin Racing (AMR) programme since 2004 in partnership with AML.
Prior to Aston focusing on F1, AMR ran factory-backed entries with much success: the most recent major triumph being in 2020 when the Vantage won the GTE class in the FIAWorld Endurance Championship (WEC) and the GTE Pro class at Le Mans. This generation of Vantage is the most successful Aston Martin racing car of all time. Currently Prodrive supplies race cars to ‘customer teams’ - independent race teams who buy and run them. AMR continues to retain professional factory drivers such as Darren Turner (three-time class winner at Le Mans), Ross Gunn and Marco Sorenson who are available to drive for customer teams.
Sports car races range from one hour in duration to the 24-hour events at Le Mans, Spa, Nürburgring and Daytona. Shorter events will feature two drivers sharing a car, typically a pro and an amateur with the amateur required to spend a minimum specified time behind the wheel. Racing is not cheap, and it is usually the amateur driver in a customer team who will pick up the bill. However, the amateurs are usually very quick, experienced drivers in their own right - just not as fast as the pros. Longer events will see three or four drivers sharing a car, often in two-hour stints.
As well as the mix of drivers making sports car racing interesting, the mix of classes adds to the spectacle. A grid combines GT3 and the slower GT4 cars, which means overtaking and managing ‘traffic’ is a constant feature. A top-level race will also be headed by the Le Mans and Daytona Hypercars (LMH and LMDh) category, where top speeds of 200mph are comparable with those in F1. Between the Hypercar and GT classes sits the Le Mans Prototype 2 class (LMP2) which competes in some series.
As well as the overall race win, competitors are fighting for class wins so the field will have a wide range of strategies and battles. Obviously, the fastest class of car can be expected to provide the overall race winner: 2023’s edition of Le Mans was won by a Ferrari Hypercar. The relatively new Hypercar class has been successful in attracting a range of manufacturers including Ferrari, Cadillac, Peugeot, Porsche, Toyota, and BMW. There is a strong possibility that Aston will enter this category with the Valkyrie next year, which would be fantastic for fans of the brand.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans was first run in 1923 - it can be regarded as the world’s pre-eminent motor race and the jewel in the crown of the WEC. The WEC consists of eight races with class and manufacturers’ titles at stake. In North America, the IMSA Sports Car Championship has the 24 Hours of Daytona as its feature event. There are regional championships such as the European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans, as well as the GT World Challenge, Intercontinental GT Challenge and related regional series.
In the UK, the national championship is British GT. A race weekend will feature a single two or three-hour race, or two one-hour races, with GT3 and GT4 cars on the grid. This year Blackthorn are running two Aston GT3 entries, while long-standing Aston amateur driver Andrew Howard’s Beechdean Motorsport has one car. Forsetti Motorsport have two GT4 cars - the #7 driven by Jamie Day and Mikey Porter won the GT4 class in the season’s first race at Oulton Park. See the next article for how they all got on in the Silverstone 500.