Farfus joins Aston WEC programme

BMW factory driver Augusto Farfus will make a return to the World Endurance Championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours this year with Aston Martin.

The Brazilian, who contested both editions of Le Mans on the 2018-19 WEC superseason calendar with BMW, has been recruited to drive Aston’s factory-run GTE Am entry for the final three events of the 2019-20 series by car owner Paul Dalla

Lana. Farfus will share the #98 Vantage GTE with Dalla Lana and Ross Gunn at Spa in August, Le Mans in September and the Bahrain finale in November.

He is replacing long-time Aston Martin Racing driver Darren Turner. The Briton will be focusing on development of the marque’s Valkyrie road car before a full-time return to the race track next season.

Farfus will also contest the second round of the European Le Mans Series at Spa on 9 August, a week before the WEC event at the Belgian track, alongside Dalla Lana and Mathias Lauda. The #98 Aston will also do the first round of the 2020 ELMS at

Paul Ricard on 19 July with Dalla Lana,

Gunn and Lauda driving.

Dalla Lana, 2017 WEC GTE Am champion with Lauda and Pedro Lamy, explained that he is good friends with Farfus and that “we’ve wanted to race together for a while”.

R Motorsport cans 2020 plans

The R-motorsport Aston Martin squad has withdrawn from this year’s GT

World Challenge Europe and will instead focus on its 2021 campaigns.

The series frontrunner, whose Aston Martin Vantage GT3S are jointly run by the British Arden and Jota Sport teams, has opted to put its racing activities on hold as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The decision covers all the Swiss entrant’s programmes, which included a return to the

Intercontinental GT Challenge at Kyalami in November and the launch of a one-make Aston series known as the Vantage Cup.

R-motorsport team principal Florian Kamelger explained that it “doesn’t make sense from a business perspective to go racing with a non-profitable, artificially shortened race programme with a late start to the season”.

The team had already withdrawn from the DTM, plunging that series into crisis.