Tom Onslow-Cole showed excellent speed in his first race aboard a GT4 Aston Martin Vantage at the Aston Martin Centenary race at Brands Hatch on Sunday.
“The car was fun to drive and it was good to be competitive right out of the box.”
The Touring Car star is though looking to go one better – “I’m working hard to get a run in a (customer) GT3 car before the end of the year. I tried to get something put together for the Spa 24 Hours but that didn’t come together in time.”
Onslow Cole tested the Bilstein sponsored V12 Vantage GT3 that later raced at the Nurburgring 24 Hours earlier this year at Snetterton with some success.
Bruno Senna was enjoying the sunshine at Brands Hatch, signing autographs aplenty and presenting the trophies too for the Centenary GT race (including the trophy that went to his AMR boss John Gaw for second place!)
Bruno also met a group of injured US Servicemen, hosted by the Mission Motorsport charity, and part of a unique exchange programme that will see three servicemen, accompanied by a Grier Martin, Member of the US House of Representatives, visiting cutting edge UK motorsport programmes including the Bloodhound SSC project and the Caterham F1 team.
Plans are afoot to try to mount an effort at the 2014 Daytona 24 Hours involving injured servicemen from both the UK and USA.
Before the start of the feature race there was a minute’s silence, immaculately observed in memory of Allan Simonsen by the whole paddock and by the thousands of fans around the circuit. The cars bore specially designed decals too commemorating Allan.
The on-track entertainment included a number of interesting Aston Martin competition cars which demonstrated – Ray Mallock piloted the Bovis liveried Aston Martin Nimrod that he campaigned in period whilst Paul Whight drove the crowd pleasing AMR1 Group C car.
There was a chance to see the unique Aston Martin DB7 GT car, designed and built for an abortive one make series, too as well as the #99 Aston Martin Vantage GTE that was driven with some vigour by Bruno Senna.
There were literally hundreds of Aston Martins around in the car parks and in club displays showing off almost every era of the company’s 100 year history – More on that soon from DSC.
