The Garage 59 Aston Martin Vantage GT3s will race into the night at Paul Ricard in the south of France this Saturday. As well as being Round 3 of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, the 1000km race is seen as the warm up for July’s Total 24 Hours of Spa.
After a bruising Silverstone round where the #59 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 was involved in an unavoidable, race-ending accident, Garage 59’s PRO drivers want a good result, more than ever before. Jonny Adam, Côme Ledogar and Andrew Watson are feeling determined, as Watson explains:
“I’m full of confidence going to Ricard this week,” he said. “We got a great podium there last year and have had some really positive testing mileage there in the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3. The Garage 59 crew have been busy rebuilding from a tough weekend for us at the last race at Silverstone. That makes us all even more determined to get the best result possible and move up in the championship standings.”
The Garage 59 team has worked around-the-clock since Silverstone to repair the #59 Aston Martin and the massive team effort got the car finished just in time for the journey to France.
“I can’t thank the team enough for their efforts over the last few days, practically rebuilding the whole car in a very short period of time,” said Team Principal, Andrew Kirkaldy. “I hope we can reward them with a good result at Ricard. We’ve run the Aston Martin there at two test sessions so let’s see if we can put together a good race.”
The #188 crew of Alexander West, Chris Goodwin and Chris Harris, finished on the AM class podium at the first two races of the season but they want more. They want to win.
“The gap between Silverstone and Ricard is short but Garage 59 have been busy,” said Goodwin. “Not only repairing the heavily-damaged Pro car, but in parallel they have undertaken a significant test programme on and off the track to better understand the new Vantage GT3 and extract more performance from it. This work will benefit the AM car as much as the PRO car and so for this weekend we in car #188 are hoping to have better pace than in the last race. Racing well has seen the #188 Aston Martin score two consecutive podiums but a little more pace should give us a chance at repeating our victory at Ricard in 2018.
“Since Silverstone (Chris) Harris and I have scored a GT4 podium for Aston Martin in the Nürburgring 24 Hours Qualifying Race on the Nordschleife,” continued Goodwin. “I’ve also kept sharp by racing historic single-seaters on the amazingly old-school Pau street circuit. That’s another Garage 59 prepared car on the podium!”
The six-hour 1000km race at Paul Ricard gets underway on Saturday 1 June at 18:00hrs CET. Follow @garage_59 on Twitter and Instagram for updates.