Aston Martin Racing will run four cars in the FIA World Endurance Championship this season as part of an extended motorsport program for 2014.
The first of the factory entries is the No.97 Gulf-liveried Vantage GTE of Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke, who return as a pairing for the fourth year in a row, and will look to build on a promising 2013 campaign after coming close to the GTE title, only to suffer engine problems at the last race.
The next entry is that of the No.99 Vantage, which will run under the banner of Bamboo Engineering, with the Touring Car squad moving to the WEC for 2014. It’ll be piloted by 2012 WEC GTE-AM World Champion Fernando Rees, Alex MacDowall, who switches from the WTCC, and Craft Racing AMR’s Darryl O’Young, who is also a former Bamboo WTCC driver.
In the third entry is the returning Young Driver AMR team, with David Heinemeier-Hansson joining last season’s drivers Kristian Poulsen, Christoffer Nygaard and Nicki Thiim, who will compete at selected rounds due to clashes with other commitments.
And finally for the WEC is the No.98 Vantage, but only Canadian Paul Dalla Lana is so far confirmed for 2014. For Le Mans, Bruno Senna will return, although in what car and who will be joining him will be made public closer to the race.
David King, Head of Motorsport at Aston Martin, said: “We are ramping up our focus on our GT3 activities as this enables us to compete for outright victory in some of the world’s toughest endurance races, such as N24, but the WEC campaign with the V8-powered Vantage GTE will once again be the backbone of our motorsport activity in 2014.”
2014 will also see the team compete at the Silverstone round of the Blancpain Endurance Series, the Spa 24 Hours, as well as ramping up support for their teams in British GT.
“This year marks the tenth anniversary for Aston Martin Racing and we can celebrate a decade of modern sportscar racing with our largest campaign yet,” said John Gaw, Team Principle of Aston Martin Racing.
“Our GT3 program has been extremely successful. We launched it back in early 2012 as a well-developed machine and this allowed customer teams to win races from the off-set and meant that they were spared costly upgrades at the end of the year.
“Last year, the GT3’s performance in the Asian Le Mans Series granted Craft Racing a 24 Hours of Le Mans entry and it won the British GT Championship with Beechdean AMR. It also led N24 for 13 hours and set pole at Spa 24 Hours. We hope to build on this success in 2014.”
