“Hello Again Endurance Info,

The first weekend in March was the official test days for LMS at Paul Ricard. It was the first chance to test with our competition. The goal for JMW was to further develop new Dunlop tyres, work on car set up and discover how the new regulations have affected us. The new rule changes have not changed the feel of the car much in the corners but we have lost significant speed on the straights compared to our main rivals, the Lieb/Leitz Porsche. Porsche seem to have done a good job with their new car and both drivers are excellent pro’s. It took us a while to understand the changes to our car but at the end of the test we were much more comfortable and better over a long run. I am very concerned by the speed of the Porsche though!

I flew out to Sebring on sat 14th. It gave me a day to relax, meet the team and make sure I was confitable in the Aston. I had to adapt my driving position to fit in with Paul and Jonny. We began testing on the Monday. This was my first time driving the GT2 Vantage, it was very different to the Ferrari I am used to. At first it was very strange, very soft , with lots of roll and difficult to any feel from the car. Soon I got to grips with the difference and after some set up changes we started to get the car handling as we wanted it. The practice was interrupted by some mechanical problems, so we lost some track time on tues and wed. The Aston is still under development and Sebring is one of the toughest circuits on cars, the team learned a lot from this and this will help them through the year, especially at LeMans.

At the end of the testing we were pleased with the car. It was on average two or three seconds off the fastest Porsche or Ferrari, which is much closer than last year and we had been running on the hard tyre option. It was also important for the race that Paul (as a non professional) felt confident in the car.

I started the race, everything went well. We were on a hard compound tyre and double stinted the tyre until the temperature dropped. This worked well and the car was handling as well as it had all week. Unfortunately Jonny went off at turn 17 in his first stint. We lost 5 laps repairing the damage. We carried on after this and the car was getting better as the race went on. I was near the end of my third stint when the engine blew up, the oil warning alarm had been on for three hours so we knew there was a problem. We kept topping up with oil to try to get to the finish but this was not possible. This was a very disappointing end to my week but I enjoyed working with everyone at Drayson Racing and I think the Aston has potential to win races soon.

Ok so i’m off to Barcelona for the first LMS round now. Very much looking forward to it.”

 Rob Bell