Aston Martin Racing will field a fifth car at the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.
Richie Stanaway will take the driver’s seat in the new #99 car in the GT Pro category, sharing driving duties with Pedro Lamy and Paul Dalla Lana. Also joining the team for the first time in 2013 will be Peter Dumbreck, joining Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke in the #97, and Rob Bell, who will sit behind the wheel of the #98 alongside Bruno Senna and Frederic Makowiecki.
An unchanged GT Am lineup will see Christoffer Nygaard, Kristian Poulsen and Allan Simonsen in the #95 machine, racing alongside the #96 car of Jamie Campbell-Walter, Roald Goethe and Stuart Hall.
“It will be a big task running five cars at Spa but it’s good preparation for Le Mans and we need to ensure that our extremely high standards we set ourselves are maintained.” said Aston Martin Racing Team Principle John Gaw. “We showed at Silverstone that we have not only managed to build, develop and prepare four cars, but we have done so to such a standard that we had no issues to speak of with any of the cars throughout the six-hour race. This is thanks to our hard-working team, which has worked tirelessly to get us off to such a solid start to the season.”
The 15-strong driver line up matches those that will run at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, with the only change being Stanaway, who will be replaced by American Le Mans Series racer Bill Auberlen at the Circuit de la Sarthe.
“Winning at Silverstone was a great way to start to the 2013 season and now, three weeks later, we head into one of the best circuits in the world; it’s in my top three, anyway.” added Turner. “The circuit is actually very similar to Silverstone in that it has medium to high-speed corners, it’s really just the change in elevation that makes it different. This means that we can carry our race-winning set-up over from Silverstone and we should be competitive. The main goal is to get more points in the bag and to keep the cars in one piece ahead of Le Mans.”
