Aston Martin Racing will look to complete its first season of competition on a high note this weekend, as it competes in the final round of the American Le Mans Series at Laguna Seca.
The race - a four-hour event - is the second in a row for the Prodrive-run team in the ALMS and, having come closest to toppling the title-winning Corvettes last time out at Petit Le Mans, the team will be looking to add to its victory in the opening round of the series, at Sebring, in March.
“Every race that we enter is the same - we are always after a victory,” team principal George Howard-Chappell noted, "Having been to Le Mans, Spa and the Petit Le Mans without winning - but being on the podium a couple of times - it is very much our intention to try and win this weekend.
"We will do the absolute maximum we can to try to beat Corvette. Obviously, they are incredibly strong opposition, as we have seen at Le Mans and at Petit, but we will do the very best we can.”
The four-hour race will be the first ‘sprint' event that the DBR9 has contested since it took victory in the
FIA GT round at
Silverstone, and its first in the US, and Howard-Chappell knows that the extra distance will throw a few unknowns into the mix.
“With a longer race, you are never sure what is going to happen, so it is important that you balance how fast you go and how much risk you take as it is important to get to the end,” he said, trying to find the mid-point between sprint race speed and long-distance endurance, “With a shorter race, it is much more of a sprint and it is all about going as hard as you can to get the best possible result.”
Darren Turner, who won at Sebring with David Brabham and Stephane Ortelli, and will this weekend drive the #57 car with the Australian insisted that Laguna will be all about speed.
