Nürburgring, 19 May 2013 – At the twenty-hour mark of the 41st ADAC Zurich 24 Hours of Nürburgring Aston Martin is in the top ten with its sights set on climbing the order during the final four hours.
Aston Martin’s Bilstein-liveried #007 V12 Vantage GT3, which was leading the race for the majority of yesterday, led the 170-plus strong grid of cars from the front at the restart of the red flagged race at 08:00 hrs with Pedro Lamy (PT) behind the wheel.
Although the daylight and lifting fog allowed for the race to restart, the rain continued to hammer down over the 25 km Nordschleife for most of the morning. With the team eager to finish the race and maintain Aston Martin’s 100% success rate for finishes at the Nürburgring, it took a conservative approach.
John Gaw, Team Principal at Aston Martin Racing comments: “Under these tricky conditions it’s important to focus on finishing the race. We also tried to save fuel to minimise time in the pits and we have struggled to get temperature in the tyres.
“Conditions are improving and so are lap times – with four hours to go we are lapping at the same pace as the lead cars. We will now push to the end to get the best position we can.”
Stefan Mücke adds: “We have had some really tough conditions out there. They did the right thing stopping the race, there was too much fog and the rain was too heavy. Yesterday we were very solid in the dry conditions but when the rain fell we had the main aim of keeping the car on track. Now the track is drying we are in a good position. The Vantage GT3 is very strong in the dry and we aim to get back some places – hopefully we’ll get a top five.”
Aston Martin’s Hybrid Hydrogen Rapide S, supported by hydrogen specialists Alset Global, continues to run smoothly. More than one and a half laps on pure hydrogen were completed earlier and the team is working hard to streamline processes, already managing to reduce hydrogen refilling to below 30 seconds.
The #005 V12 Vantage, also continues is charge. A small electrical issue towards the end of Sunday’s session put the close-to-production specification car behind its SP8 class competitors and it is currently lapping at similar times to the lead car in the class.
David King, Head of Motorsport at Aston Martin comments: “We are very happy at how smoothly the Hybrid Hydrogen Rapide S has run so far, but there is still a long way to go. The important thing is that we finish the race and go away from here having developed the car and its race running.”
The 2013 Nürburgring 24 Hours finishes at 17:00 CET on Monday 20 May. Follow the team’s progress in the dedicated area of the website www.astonmartin.com/n24, on Facebook www.facebook.com/astonmartinracing and on Twitter using @amr_official