Aston up for Silverstone
Aston Martin and the R-motorsport squad are in bullish mood ahead of this weekend’s Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup encounter at Silverstone as they attempt to pull off a repeat of their victory in the corresponding fixture last year. They believe that the new-for-2019 Vantage GT3 that led the Monza series opener last month should be a more competitive proposition at the British track than its predecessor.
Jake Dennis, Nicki Thiim and Matthieu Vaxiviere claimed victory on home ground 12 months ago aboard the outgoing V12 Vantage GT3 contender, which lacked the downforce of its successor. That’s why Aston is hopeful of being right in the mix during Sunday’s three-hour race with the new car after an encouraging outing at Monza.
“The V12 Vantage lacked a bit of downforce and that’s something we have addressed with this car,” said
Aston Martin Racing technical director Dan Sayers, who led the development of both the new V8-powered GT3 and its Gte-class cousin that races in the World Endurance Championship. “It’s a very different beast and of all the circuits Silverstone, with so many fast corners, should be one of our best.”
R-motorsport, which is jointly run by the British Arden and Jota teams, led the race at Monza with the car shared by Dennis, Thiim and Marvin Kirchhofer. A puncture and a drivethrough penalty for a pitlane infraction ultimately removed the car from contention, though the Garage 59 entry driven by Jonny Adam, Come Ledogar and Andrew Watson notched up a top-10 finish for the new Vantage.
The Astons went into the series opener with what Maxime Martin, who shares the sister car with Vaxiviere and Matt Parry, called a “not so good” Balance of Performance. “The organisers are always a little bit conservative before they see what you can really do with a new car,” said Martin. “We were a little bit on the back foot at Monza, I think.”
The new Vantage will run 20kg lighter this weekend than at the first round and also has a more favourable turboboost curve, which means more power. The Porsche 911 GT3-R that won in the wet-dry race in Italy is also lighter by 20kg, whereas the Bentley Continental GT3, for example, is 15kg heavier.
But it’s not a like-for-like comparison. Silverstone is what series organiser SRO calls a category C track, whereas Monza is category A, and the BOP is calculated to reflect the different characteristics of the different types of circuit.
Jota boss Sam Hignett warned that there can be no guarantees of victory in one of the most competitive sportscar series in the world. “There are so many strong cars that you can be right there on pace, but still end up P15 in qualifying – it can really be that close,” he said. “You need the stars to align and put together the perfect weekend to win in the BGTS, but I would say that we are more positive going into this weekend than we were last year.”