Sunday, April 16, 2017

Aston Martin Racing Claims Podium At 6 Hours Of Silverstone

Aston Martin Racing claimed its first podium of 2017 after the team’s #98 V8 Vantage GTE finished the FIA World Endurance Championship’s season opener at Silverstone in second place.

After qualifying on pole yesterday, Paul Dalla Lana, Mathias Lauda and Pedro Lamy amassed a commanding lead by the three-hour mark. Despite the team’s strong start, an incident in the series’ LMP1 class ensured the safety car came into play, diminishing the crew’s advantage in the process.


With the three GTE Am leaders trading lap-times throughout the closing stages, Lamy emerged second by the fall of the checkered flag cementing a strong start to the team’s 2017 GTE Am campaign.

Lamy said, “We were enjoying a very strong race until the safety car arrived, which completely destroyed the advantage we had. We lost everything and then of course the race starts again from zero. On the restart, the Ferrari was a little faster than us and we had to defend ourselves hard until the end to claim this position. That was a positive result though and we start the championship well, but we we’re now completely focused on the next race at Spa”.

Co-driver Lauda added, “My second stint, we were still in the lead 
the Ferrari but with a much smaller lead than before. I could hold the gap at around 5 to 6 seconds but it was getting tougher as Pedro jumped in for the final laps. We’re very pleased with the points, we didn’t make any mistakes ourselves and we’ll be working a bit harder to make sure we have a little more pace in Spa”.

In GTE Pro, the team’s #95 and #97 entries completed the season opener 6th and 7th respectively, adding to the team’s overall manufacturer points tally.

According to the team, Silverstone was a challenging first round to the championship. The race threw up many situations but the team reacted well to each of them.

Aston Martin Racing enjoyed further racing success across the weekend, as customer teams TF Sport and Beechdean AMR finished 1st and 3rd in Saturday’s European Le Mans Series opener; the 4 Hours of Silverstone.

With factory driver Nicki Thiim  racing with TF Sport and Darren Turner piloting the Beechdean AMR entry, the result demonstrates the strength of the V8 Vantage GTE beyond the FIA World Endurance Championship.

“The V8 Vantage GTE remains a force to be reckoned with on track as well as Aston Martin Racing drivers,” said Sonny Morgan, general manager of Late European. “Congratulations to all of the drivers on their successes this weekend”.

Aston Martin Racing returns to the WEC on Saturday 6 May for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.

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