ASTON GETS THE BREAK AGAINST PORSCHE HORDES

Aston Martin took victory in a GTE Am contest that had looked almost certain to go the way of Porsche, as Ben Keating exorcised the demons of his 2019 disqualification with the TF Sport team.

Such was the speed of the 911 RSR in the opening part of the race that Porsches occupied five of the top six places after the first hour. But one by one, several promising entries dropped out with various offs and incidents, including both the #46 and #56 Team Project 1 cars and the #99 Absolute Racing-run Hardpoint car.

That left the #79 Weathertech Racing 911 of Cooper Macneil, Julien Andlauer and the surprise package of the race, bronze-rated Trans-am racer Thomas Merrill, who was frequently faster than silver-rated Macneil. But the TF Aston of Keating, Henrique Chaves and ex-factory racer Marco Sorensen was always in the hunt.

“What saved us from the #79 was the safety car with about five hours to go,” admitted Keating. “We were off strategy with all the other cars, most of the others had just pitted and we got on their tail in the same safety car train, so we were almost a lap up.

“We got really lucky there. We gave up two and a half minutes in the last five hours, so they had the pace.” The winning margin was only 44 seconds, although Sorensen was in the envious position of being able to manage an advantage twice that in the final two hours.

Behind the Weathertech Porsche, it was another Aston that completed the podium. The Northwest AMR car of Paul Dalla Lana, David Pittard and Nicki Thiim was third after a relatively trouble-free run, profiting when the Dempsey-proton Porsche of Harry Tincknell, Seb Priaulx and Christian Ried suffered a broken wishbone with only a couple of hours to go.