Aston Martin Racing will have an guest appearance in the European Le Mans Series for a couple of weekends.
The British team enters a single Aston Martin Vantage GTE car at the Paul Ricard and Spa Francorchamps rounds.
The rules for GTE in the ELMS dictate at least one Bronze driver in the car, which effectively is a GTE Am car in the FIA WEC rules. So it will be car #98 from the FIA WEC, who will run these races.
Paul Dalla Lana will be joined by his regular teammate Ross Gunn at Paul Ricard, and will be reunited with his former teammate, Mathias Lauda. Dalla Lana and Lauda raced together for four seasons in the FIA WEC, before Lauda made way ahead of the 2019/20 season, with Gunn taking over that seat.
It won’t, however, be these three drivers at the ELMS round at Spa Francorchamps in August. This will be Dalla Lana, Lauda and Augusto Farfus. Farfus is currently a BMW works driver, but also personal friend with Canadian Dalla Lana.
Photo: JJ Media
To make things even more complicated, the AMR #98 will continue to run for the rest of the FIA WEC season, including a race at Spa Francorchamps, one week after the ELMS round.
That race will have Dalla Lana, Farfus and Gunn in the car, with those three drivers slated to do the rest of the FIA WEC season together.
Darren Turner was planned to be full season driver in the #98 with Gunn and Dalla Lana throughout the 2019/20 season, but the Brit will instead focus on developing roads cars for Aston Martin, plus he got another job by testing the new hybrid system for the BTCC, which will be introduced in 2022. Turner will still be reserve for the GTE and GT3 programmes for the rest of the year, with a hint of a full season drive for 2021 once again.
The European Le Mans Series starts testing at Paul Ricard next Tuesday, while the race weekend itself starts Friday morning, with the race being run on Sunday 19. July.
