There is “a very strong order book” for the revised version of a car that came on stream in 2019, said Aston Martin head of endurance Adam Carter ahead of the official launch of the car on Monday timed to coincide with the announcement of the latest road-going Vantage.
Carter revealed that Aston will have approximately 10 cars in the new trim racing by the start of the season and that further examples will be delivered to customer teams as it progresses.
“There will be 30 cars in the new spec by the end of the year, not all competing because some teams will have a spare car,” he explained.
“But it will be in the high 20s competing - that’s the projection.”
With regarded to orders for the car, Carter added that it “wasn’t possible to fulfil all of them by the start of the season” and that deliveries have been “staggered to get maximum coverage” for the car around the world.
The latest Aston announced in October 2023 has already made its race debut: it was on the grid for the Daytona 24 Hours IMSA SportsCar Championship opener last month racing in the GT Daytona classes in the hands of the Heart of Racing and Magnus Racing teams.
Further confirmed programmes for the evo Vantage include the two-car assault on the World Endurance Championship’s new LMGT3 class under the HoR and D’station Racing banners and run by the Prodrive/Aston Martin Racing squad.
The Spa 24 Hours-winning Walkenhorst squad, which has swapped to Aston from BMW for 2024, and Comtoyou Racing from Belgium will both compete with the new Vantage in the GT World Challenge Europe.
Walkenhorst will field a car in the Pro class of the Endurance Cup segment of the GTWCE with a line-up made up of Aston factory drivers, which will be the first assault by the British manufacturer on the premier class of the series since 2019.
D’station will also take Aston back to the GT300 class of the Super GT Series in Japan for the first time since 2020.
Carter said that it is expected that the evo Vantage will also appear in the British GT Championship and domestic series in Germany and Italy.
The 30-car figure of Vantage GT3s by the end of the year will be made up of a roughly equal split of new and updated existing machinery.
The arrival of the updated Vantage GT3, along with a new version of the GT4 variant, is part of a renewed commitment to GT racing by Aston Martin alongside its return to the pinnacle of sportscar racing with the Valkyrie Le Mans Hypercar in both the WEC and IMSA from 2025.
Carter explained that the launch of a revised road-going Vantage, the adoption of GT3 regulations by the WEC and a desire to address the shortcomings of the original version of the car had driven a decision made in the autumn of 2022 to develop an evolution version of the GT3.
“It was the perfect time to do a new car,” he said.
The focus during the development undertaken at Prodrive, the manufacturer’s long-term partner in GT racing, and the Aston Martin Performance Technologies set-up based on the same campus as the Formula 1 team, was to produce a car that is more driveable, particularly for the amateur race.
The changes, described by Carter as “far reaching”, include all-new aerodynamics and suspension geometry.
Brake cooling has also been uprated and the serviceability of the car improved.
The list price for the latest car, known simply as the Vantage GT3 without any evo suffix, is £575,000 less taxes.
