24 Hours of Le Mans: News, Photos and Travel Tips » astonmartin

Audi Wins the 8 Hours of Castellet

admin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:05:10 +0000

Audi makes a successful return to Le Mans Series by winning the 8 Hours of Le Castellet. The Audi R15 Plus, driven by McNish and Capello finished first in 8 hours and 36 seconds after having completed 266 laps at an average speed of 192.3 km/h.

Aston Martin Racing and Rebellion Racing have finished in second and third place respectively lagging five laps behind the Audi. Team Oreca-Matmut who had successfully secured the pole position during qualifying sessions only finished in fourth place, 8 laps behind the winner, with an average speed of 185.9 km/h

Le Mans Series News Roundup

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:43:14 +0000

So, plenty of Le Series Mans related news these days. Let me sum it up for you:

Former Formula 1 driver Giancarlo Fisichella will race the full 2010 Le Mans Series season. He will drive a GT2 Ferrari F430 GT for team AF Corse.
LMP1 team Signature Competition acquired a Lola Aston Martin which they will race in 2010 in the Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. So I really hope they’ll give that car a decent paint work not that uninteresting, unappealing, pale Gulf blue an orange. Seriously, how can you paint an Aston like that? Last year at scrutineering a couple of teenagers passed by the 007 exclaiming: look, a GT40!!! I guess you realized by now I don’t like the Aston LMP1 paintwork. The Aston will replace an Oreca-Judd prototype.
More Aston news: the fine people at JVM Motorsport switched cars. They ditched the old Ferarri F430 and got a brand new Aston Martin Vantage GT2. This is important for two reasons. For you and me, this means the Spyker LAVIOLETTE will not be the only car in GT2 that is not a Porsche GT3 RSR or a Ferarri F430. So it’ll make it more interesting. For Aston Martin this means the british marque is establishing a presence in three Le Mans categories, which is good for their image. Especially if they win.
Audi has decided to throw the new and revised R15 Plus to the wolfs so they registered it for the 8 Hours of Le Castellet in April and the 1000 Km of Spa in May in order to warm it up for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June. This is basically a good thing for them because nothing gives you better feedback about a race car than throwing it in a real race. It’s also a good thing for us fans because it makes the show better. After Le Mans, Audi will also race at Silverstone. So they’ll be there at three races out of five. If they win them all, they win the series. The fine chaps at AMR are probably not very happy about this, I would guess.

Hernandez partners with Aston Martin for Sebring and Le Mans

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:50:24 +0000

Aston Martin Racing announced they partnered with Adrian Fernandez of Fernandez Racing for the later to join the Aston Martin drivers lineup which includes Chris Buncombe, Stefan Mücke Harold Primat and Darren Turner. Fernandez, who won the American Le Mans Series LMP2 category in 2009 will race for Aston Martin in the Amercan Le Mans Series at Sebring and Long Beach, in the (European) Le Mans Series at Paul Ricard HTTT as well as at the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2010. More joint races will be announced in the coming weeks.

So what’s in it for both parties? Well, Aston Martin is getting an exceptional driver in their 2010 Le Mans lineup while Fernandez gets a chance to compete at Le Mans in a competitive LMP1 car. Looking forward to the results.