Motorsport News

VULCAN TO GET UK RACING DEBUT

Hypercar to compete at an Aston Martin Owners Club meeting

- By Stephen Lickorish

The Aston Martin Vulcan is set to make its race debut at the Aston Martin Owners Club’s Snetterton meeting next month.

There will be a special 90-minute AMR Aston Martin Challenge race at the July 23 meeting which will be open to any of the marque’s cars, with at least one Vulcan expected to be on the grid.

The track-focused Vulcan was first launched in 2015 but has yet to race competitiv­ely. It features a seven-litre engine that delivers 800bhp. No drivers have been announced yet, but it is expected that one of AMR’S active roster of factory drivers will likely handle the car. Nurburgrin­g specialist Peter Dumbreck has also conducted demo laps in the Vulcan regularly.

Aston Club Racing director Roger Bennington said: “The plan is to run one or two Vulcans for their first race. It’s quite exciting and will hopefully get a bit of a crowd in.”

Bennington added that entries were going to be diverse, and that there was a plan to also run the Lola-aston Martin B09/60 LMP1 car, which raced at Le Mans in 2009 and 2010, and also appeared during the Aston Martin Festival celebratio­n event at La Sarthe last year.

“We are also working to have an LMP1 car, GT2S and quite a few GT3S – entries are starting to come in now,” said Bennington. “As long as it has got an Aston badge on it, it can enter and there will be lots of different classes. There will also be unrestrict­ed noise limits for the race and three hours of exclusive testing on the Friday.”

Besides the 90-minute enduro, there will also be a full programme of the club’s categories.

“There will also be a Pre-war Team Challenge race and races for Intermarqu­e, Multimarqu­e, Equipe GTS, Innes Ireland Cup and 50s Sports Cars so it will be quite a full-on day,” added Bennington. “We are really trying to push the Multimarqu­e series and we would like to get some other cars like Ferraris and Porsches in it. There are a lot of older GT cars that don’t really fit into other series.”

 ?? Photos: Gary Hawkins, Richard Styles, Steve Jones ??
Photos: Gary Hawkins, Richard Styles, Steve Jones

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom