Darren Turner has two decades as an Aston Martin driver under his belt and is not stopping anytime soon as he carries out his British GT comeback.
The factory and high-performance test driver is in his 21st year with the British manufacturer and is undertaking his 2026 British GT Championship campaign with a brand new operation, Grange Racing by Full Send Racing (FSR).
Turner returned to the SRO-promoted championship after four years away, having left unfinished business when he finished second in the overall GT4 standings, despite winning the GT4 Pro-Am title for a second time consecutively.
Claiming the team’s maiden victory at the Oulton Park sprint meeting, it was his teammate Daniel Lavery at the wheel of Grange Racing by FSR’s #27 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT4 Evo during the run to the chequered flag in Race 2. Lavery successfully held off Aston Martin Formula 1 team ambassador Jessica Hawkins around the narrow and undulating circuit.
Turner’s partnership with Prodrive began in 2003 and into 2004, sharing a Ferrari 550-GTS Maranello in the latter running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with 1998 BTCC champion Rickard Rydell and the late 1995 WRC champion Collin McRae.
He transitioned to Aston Martin machinery with Prodrive in the years that followed.
“It’s been amazing to go through GT1, LMP1, GT2, GTE, GT3, GT4,” Turner tells DSC. “To pretty much go across everything they’ve ever produced in this chapter of Aston Martin Racing’s history has been a real privilege to do so.
“Some decent success, amazing teammates across the years, amazing cars, amazing races. From my side, I couldn’t have actually wished for more.
“If I said this was what was going to happen when I started with the team in 2005, I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.”
Most of the machinery he has driven featured the distinctive symphonic V12 engine soundtrack which Aston Martin is revered for across many of their race, road and track-day cars.
This includes the beloved DBR9 GT1, and the V12 Vantage GT3, plus the Lola-Aston Martin B09/60 LMP1. He was also involved in the development of the Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar.
He has achieved class victories at some iconic races in motorsport, like the Le Mans 24 Hours (thrice), the Daytona 24 Hours, and the Nürburgring 24 Hours, to name a few — but British GT glory is his current focus, 10 years after winning the European Le Mans Series GTE title.
He is three races into his fifth British GT season and his first in the updated ‘Evo’ generation of the AMR Vantage GT4 car as Grange Racing by FSR establishes its learning curve in this early part of the campaign.
“I’ve had a relationship with Grange for 10 years; they’ve been a personal sponsor of mine,” he explains.
“Dan Lavery started racing not that many years ago, but in BMW one-make series, so I know him through Grange, and then he was like, ‘Do you think I’ll be ready for British GT?’
“From what I saw, and in some of the testing we did together, it was like you don’t need to have a year preparing, you could come straight in, and he’s proven already he’s got really good pace for a Bronze — exceptional pace and consistency.
“He’s started extremely well, and we’re on a learning curve.
“Grange Racing is new, FSR is new – lots of learning to do with the car.
“It was quite confusing for how people got into sports car racing (in the past), but now there are clear pathways — a lower GT formula into GT4, GT3, and that’s the top of the GT programme.
“Obviously, you could go across and look at prototype racing if you wanted.
“As far as I can work out, sports car racing globally right now has never been so healthy, with so many drives available, so many professional race drivers, so many strong championships, it’s in great shape.”
Like in many of the Pros in the Pro-Am driver line-ups seen in British GT, Turner fulfils a role to support Lavery.
He explained Lavery’s ability to act on feedback and a pre-existing mentorship with team manager and former British GT racer Elliott Cole, who drove a Mosler MT900 in 2006 and 2007.
“He’s worked with Elliott for two to three years now, and Elliott’s done an exceptional job of developing him and educating him on what needs to be done behind the wheel,” he adds. “So I actually haven’t had too much to do.
“A lot of drivers with that level of experience aren’t able to translate from watching the [on-board] video to looking at the data to actually implementing that on the circuit, where he’s able to do that.
“That said, Elliott’s done a great job. Dan’s well prepped, and he’s got all the attributes that we need to be fast beyond the wheel.”
In our interview between the first and second sprint races on a hot Oulton Park race day, he praised the progress Grange Racing by FSR has made so far.
Turner went on to exceed his podium ambitions for Race 2 by taking his first GT4 victory since Brands Hatch 2022.
The #27 Aston Martin GT4 car is one of four on the grid, and MK Racing’s #21 Aston Martin duo of Hawkins and Will Orton are the best in the bunch, currently second in the standings.
The prospect of championship contention might be far-fetched for such a new outfit like Grange Racing by FSR. It demands top consistent results, and Hawkins/Orton are a perfect example of how high the benchmark is, as they have only second-place finishes so far this season.
Aside from the progress the team is making, Turner is enjoying British GT’s GT3-GT4 multi-class spectacle, which drew attention when Hugo Cook held off AMR factory driver Ross Gunn at the end of the first Oulton race, whilst lapping Turner.
“It’s all part of the sport,” he says. “Traffic management is key, and being able to navigate – if you’re in a GT3 – through GT4s quickly without any damage, is one thing.
“If you’re in a GT4, you’re trying not to lose too much time with the GT3s coming past, so it’s all part of it, and it’s actually what makes it exciting.
“Some people like the purity of that not being there, and it’s just one class of racing, where I enjoy it because it mixes it up, and it’s another skill level to have.”
Grange Racing by FSR’s Oulton Park triumph was overdue following a challenging first two races.
Turner was involved in an incident which put them out at the Silverstone 500 season opener. Then the team received a drive-through penalty during Race 1 at Oulton because Lavery mistakenly left the engine running during the pit stop; this was converted to a 30-second time penalty.
Lavery/Turner are fourth in the outright GT4 standings on 31 points, ahead of the upcoming round at the famous Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, 36.5 points away from the leaders, Innovation Racing.
Grange Racing by FSR faces a difficult task in going to a high-speed circuit like Spa after winning at Oulton.
Back in 2021, Turner finished second in the GT4 category at British GT’s excursion to Belgium and is still keen to taste victory in the Ardennes Forest.
“I don’t think he’s (Dan Lavery) done a race out there,” he said. “So he knows the circuit from the test days that we’ve done, but I wouldn’t say he’s at that level where he’s super comfortable with it, because it’s such a challenging circuit.
“He’s going to have to get plenty of track time when we’re out there and focus on him.
“I will sacrifice some of the extra track time from myself to make sure he gets plenty of laps because the lap time takes so long, you don’t actually get that many laps in a normal British GT weekend, so we need to focus on that.
“From us as a driver pairing and a team, adapting to the different circuits hasn’t been too much of a problem, but they are uniquely different, and that’s what makes it so exciting to be racing in British GT.”
