Aston Martin has revealed the 2024 Vantage GT3, which will see duty in the WEC and a host of other championships.
The vehicle was launched alongside the new roadgoing variant which, says global chief brand and commercial officer Marco Mattiacci, “signals a closer relationship between our road and race program, with Aston Martin Racing benefitting from the exceptional pool of talent, experience and knowledge forged in Formula 1 and found throughout Aston Martin Performance Technologies.”
Aston Martin states that the car is an evolution of ideas fielded in its previous GTE and GT3 cars, and has been developed in conjunction with Aston Martin Performance Technologies, which has been spun off from the Aston Martin Racing F1 operation.
Adam Carter, Aston Martin’s head of endurance motorsport, said, “The new GT3 is our first opportunity to use AMPT to play a role in leveraging the capabilities, attitude and methodologies of all of Aston Martin’s various nerve centers, which we’ve then combined with the unrivalled GT program management expertise of AMR. The GT racing program will serve as a development lab that will lead to an increasing transfer of knowledge and approach into future Aston Martin road cars.”
The Vantage GT3 upgrades center on addressing some of the old car’s more challenging handling characteristics with the aim of making the new GT3 as driveable as possible for both professional and amateur drivers alike.
As lead engineer on the GT3 program, Aston Martin Racing’s head of performance, Gustavo Betelli, was charged with ensuring the Vantage GT3 delivered the desired combination of pace and approachability: “The focus on the new Vantage GT3 was to increase their performance window and make something that would work at any circuit, on any tire and with any driver. We also had to work to the new regulations, so this required additional changes.
“These new generation GT3 cars are more dependent than ever on aerodynamic downforce, so we wanted to make the car more stable under braking. The old car would dive a lot under braking, so we had to try and control the pitch with the rear suspension set-up. But this meant it was stiff, which made it quite snappy and, also over-worked the tires. Working heavily on damper tuning, we have found a much better balance with the new car so we can generate the downforce without compromising the suspension set-up.
“The result is much-improved progression and greater stability in all conditions. It also works its tires much more evenly, so teams have more options on strategy. The feedback from drivers who’ve tested it has been overwhelmingly positive. Especially the amateur racers, who have been able to achieve lap times that are much closer to the pros. Now we need to go racing.”
The road car’s new wider grille aperture has been transferred to the race car and afforded AMR the opportunity to increase the volume of ducted cooling air to the brakes, which now give drivers more consistent performance.
The nose itself is a large one-piece carbon composite clamshell, featuring a quick-release design to facilitate rapid removal and replacement in the event of mid-race accident damage. The nose houses a full-width laser light, and a shorter splitter than its predecessor; the effect of this is to move the center of pressure rearward to reduce pitch sensitivity and aid stability. Large louvres in the top of the front wheel arches evacuate high-pressure air to reduce lift, with an even larger stack of louvres in the rear arches enabling high pressure to escape from the rear to reduce drag.
The car has already found customers, and long-standing AMR partners Heart of Racing and D’station Racing have been joined by newcomers such as Germany’s Walkenhorst Motorsport and Belgian team ComToYou Racing. Flying Lizard Motorsports, already a Vantage GT4 partner team, will now step up to the Vantage GT3 in the USA. It is projected that as many as 30 Vantage GT3s will be actively racing by the end of the 2024 season.
