What is Aston Martin up to?

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by deggis

Denial from Lauda: http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/me...ed-bull-tie-up

Toto Wolff Says Maybe

A later article from the boss of Mercedes GP, not the figurehead.

How about a Red Bull Aston Martin road car?

[Pole2Win]

Aston should've updated to the V12 a couple years ago. I have my suspicions on why they didn't do it, but still don't understand it.

[TF110]

Fuel efficiency? Weight? Rules? Would be awesome to see a v12 aston again. Really like that Vulcan.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Toto Wolff Says Maybe

A later article from the boss of Mercedes GP, not the figurehead.

Never-say-never-kind-of-maybe... and after clearly denying the rumor.

[TzeiTzei]

Somehow this Aston Martin/Red Bull thing feels like a nissan-esque marketing campaing. Maximum publicity for minimum dollars. I wonder if it will even happen. RB gets to put some pressure on Renault and AM gets free publicity.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Pandamasque

Are we watching the same races? From what I can tell
1. AMR need to double their car count to have a hope at winning, because with AMR's current luck, if they don't retire after a mechanical failure or a crash, they'll have a piano fall out of the sky and crush the car.
2. Replaced by whom? There aren't that many GTE cars to lose any, let alone competitively driven ones.

The regular races they could win every single one. The only race they cannot rely on BoP to win on is Le Mans, because it's not a sprint race and they always manage to mess it up themselves for whatever reason or through lackluster reliability. Alright, they did win last year in AM, but factory car being allowed to win "Amateur" pro-am class is laughable as it is Same for the WEC titles

Prototypes could replace them as well

[deggis]

The F1 plot thickens / rumor changes: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/119869

[Deleted]

All British "Williams Martini Aston Martin Racing" would be the most logical right? It's not like that team is swimming in money either.

[J Jay]

Whatever team they choose it's going to be a bit of a mouthful, and that's not great when brand association is the crux of a tie-up like this.

Williams would be the best bet for the British connection and because they are the next best Merc team after the works outfit, and therefore the most likely to take it to Ferrari.

[Deleted]

No worse than the rebranding crap in LMP2 for example though

Or the various "Lotus" outfits in the past few years of F1, and in sportscars...

[Pandamasque]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Prototypes could replace them as well

There are plenty enough P2s, thank you. Remove a couple of GTE cars and you'll end up with zero racing in the class after 30 minutes in most cases. It's pretty lean as it is.

Originally Posted by Chiana

Alright, they did win last year in AM, but factory car being allowed to win "Amateur" pro-am class is laughable as it is

Factory in the name only, I'm starting to suspect same goes for the Pro cars too. The fact that only 3 C7.R chassis have been ever built and that the GM's works team didn't have a single spare one at any point this entire season speaks volumes about the level of factory involvement in GTE (Manthey Porsche aside). I bet a GTE-Am AF Corse wouldn't run into such troubles, although it's officially not a works team. So who's more of a 'factory' team?

IMO, privateer GT racing should move to some new reformed global version of GT4, with simpler, cheaper, less aerodynamic and more powerful cars, and have works efforts racing hypercars (GTP or whatever) for overall wins.

[Mike E]

Adrian Newey to design Aston hypercar.

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/mo...r-aston-martin

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Pandamasque

Factory in the name only, I'm starting to suspect same goes for the Pro cars too. The fact that only 3 C7.R chassis have been ever built and that the GM's works team didn't have a single spare one at any point this entire season speaks volumes about the level of factory involvement in GTE (Manthey Porsche aside). I bet a GTE-Am AF Corse wouldn't run into such troubles, although it's officially not a works team. So who's more of a 'factory' team?

IMO, privateer GT racing should move to some new reformed global version of GT4, with simpler, cheaper, less aerodynamic and more powerful cars, and have works efforts racing hypercars (GTP or whatever) for overall wins.

The poor Astons might be funded through gentleman hands and teams masqueraded when they are in fact in alliance with external parties, but AMR money is still going there and the racing operations are run through them. In any case, the most ridiculous thing is that this sub proam category even allows such thing to happen.

Corvette builds so few cars because they don't care about the privateer market and second hand shopping, you only need to look at the C5-R & C6.R chassis archives.

The last paragraph for this vision of new GT4 sounds like this category brought alongside GT1 and GT2 a decade ago, called GT3. And we know how that turned out when it got out of control...

[YZFrider]

Originally Posted by Chiana

The last paragraph for this vision of new GT4 sounds like this category brought alongside GT1 and GT2 a decade ago, called GT3. And we know how that turned out when it got out of control...

And a decade before that, when the BPR GT series wanted to bring grand touring cars back to the forefront...

[Deleted]

The Astons have just received big air restrictor decreases both in PRO and AM, -0,8 mm bringing them down to "just" +0,3mm above the base displacement values. Meaning that the restrictors are at their lowest for this car in 5-6 years time, maybe even more? Now, the Vantage does still have loads of other generous allowances under it's belt so it's not gonna break the tower, but I guess ACO and co are finally showing some signs of growing tired of this ancient car being allowed to be overpowered all the time? Maybe Ferrari and Porsche have threatened them or something.

[TF110]

Come on, this version of the car wont be raced anymore after this season. A big restrictor wont be needed at Nurburgring anyway.

[Deleted]

I thought they are only replacing the floor and roof hatch, and maybe something cosmetic, it's still the same basic chassis until the end of 2017.

Anyway -0,8mm is pretty substantial all things considered, and I doubt they are increasing the restrictors again immediately after Ring

[TF110]

My point is next year is supposed to have new rules on bop not just the cars. But Im sure even then there will be something that doesnt sit right in the equalization.

[rich07]

Originally Posted by TF110

Come on, this version of the car wont be raced anymore after this season. A big restrictor wont be needed at Nurburgring anyway.

Please tell me they're bringing back the dbr9 for one last season before the new car comes in 2017 . I dare to dream

[airbusA346]

It would appear that the person who applied the stickers onto 'Billie' wasn't paying much attention.

https://www.silverstoneauctions.com/...ks-vantage-gt3

[MitchZ06]

That's a blunder!

[rich07]

Haha poor Pedro now he has dual citizenship.

I'll put a tenner in the pot for Billie, that Bilstein livery looks damn good on the Vantage GT3.

[Deleted]

DSC:

Aston Martin Racing are less than happy with the revised Balance of Performance dealt out for their cars post Le Mans, a senior team source offering the opinion that they had never before seen a methodology of determining their potential pace akin to that apparently used to make the change, the team suggesting that a figure for potential ultimate pace was arrived at by estimating a lap time that Nikki Thiim COULD have achieved IF he had raced at Spa (which he didn’t!).

Yes that does sound dubious I guess, but does it really matter what excuse for a 'method' they did or did not use... if details mattered, your car would/should have never even been in the favoured teachers pet position you've enjoyed for the past few years

[TF110]

Why make a super race car if itll get bop'd? The argument that theyre favored can go both ways.

[Deleted]

You are right, it is the fault of the ruleset not the runners. But to say they have not been favored, no I don't think so, they have been overpowered for most of the time since they returned to run as factory team in '12. At least when you are genuinely overpowered there is argument for letting to keep them there because it's their own doing, but when you are artificially overpowered it's another thing. They didn't let Ferrari to celebrate with their awesome DI more than just a couple of races, but AMR has been blasting timesheets for years now without anyone dragging them back too much. Even when something has been done it's quickly been reverted after usual sandbagging (for example 2014 Test day -> LM). These recent changes are more substantial, which is one of the first knockbacks for them.

Anyway, regarding to what the source in that article is saying about the reason, I don't understand why ACO-FIA seemingly even attempts to make some "explanations" for the manufacturers in this day and age? There is no more "0,5% rule" of ILMC 2011 anymore, or any of what existed (or rather didn't exist) before that for GT2. Everybody knows that these moves are political all the way . It's not like the parties can do anything about the changes anyway, just have to accept them. So why give reasons...