TF Sport have proven to be a very effective outfit in recent seasons since Tom Ferrier established his Kent, UK-based team in 2014. Since then there have been title wins in British GT, Blancpain Endurance Cup and the Michelin Le Mans Cup, all with the team’s Aston Martin V12 Vantage GT3 cars plus race wins in International GT Open too.
There’s been progress too with TF’s GTE programme, the team taking the ELMS fight to the wire last year with a first GTE race win coming in their very first race.
That season performance saw TF earn a second consecutive Le Mans entry (after a seventh in class in 2017, the entry earned via their title win in the Michelin Le Mans Cup), though by stepping up to the FIA WEC in the 2018/19 season they would have been there anyway!
They’ve been regular podium visitors too in the WEC, a dnf at Le Mans the only blot on the copybook that has otherwise seen a trio of second-place class finishes, the team very much in the title hunt.
So with the European season over, and the WEC midway through its transitional ‘Super Season’, it’s a quiet time for the team then?
“Err no!,” said Tom Ferrier at Fuji Speedway ahead of a race that scored another second place in the high-quality GTE AM class for the #90 Aston Martin. The team is about to embark on yet another new adventure, a full season Asian Le Mans Series campaign with one of the long-serving V12 Vantage GT3s for Johnny Mowlem and his Red River Sport charges Bon Grimes and Ivor Dunbar:
“The car is already containered up and on its way to Shanghai for the season opener, I think it will be very competitive, it may be an older GT3 car but its still shown itself to be a force to be reckoned with!”
That though is likely to be the final full season international effort for TF Sport with the old-shape GT3 car, a new era is dawning, and things are about to get busier still for the team.
The first of their new shape Vantage GT3s is due for delivery very soon with a debut race already programmed but not yet announced. That car will be joined by a second GT3 spec car, this one confirmed for the full 2019 British GT Championship with Mark Farmer already confirmed for a return.
A third reserved production slot for a GT3 car is also confirmed with work going on behind the scenes to determine whether and when that car might join the fleet, additional British GT and/ or Blancpain GT commitments are under consideration at present.
The new GT3 car is capable of simple conversion to GTE spec so the team can afford to wait to see whether a return to the WEC, or the ELMS, is on the agenda next year too. And then there’s GT4, a class that TF has contested previously, and they will again in 2019 with at least one, and possibly a pair of new shape Aston Martin Vantage GT4s.
Tot that little lot up and Ferrier and co. will have 5-7 Aston Martins, old shape GT3 and GTE, and new shape GT3, GT4 and possible GTE on track in 2019. No wonder DSC’s Stephen Kilbey has dubbed them TF Corse!
