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MOTORSPORT BRItCAR 24hR, SILVERStOnE Nicholas Mee Racing’s regular driver Karsten Le Blanc teamed up with Sarah Bennett-Baggs, Ben de Zille Butler and his rising star cousin Dan de Zille for the Britcar 24hr race at Silverstone on 2nd-3rd September. Ably run by Team Manager Giles Dawson, NMR qualified its V8 Vantage GT4 15th in class and 27th out of 60 starters. The lights turned to green at 4.30pm on the Saturday and during the first few hours the NMR Aston made steady progress up the leaderboard. After four hours the team lay in 18th overall, but, with darkness falling at 7.30pm, the conditions soon became tricky as day turned to night and dry turned to drizzle. The drizzle then soon turned to rain and by late evening the rain had become torrential, but still the team continued to improve its position. By midnight NMR was up into 14th position. The night brought its share of accidents and subsequent safety car periods and, to make matters worse, thick fog reduced visibility to almost zero. Despite being hit by a passing Mosler and a long, fog-bound safety car stint, by dawn the team had risen to 11th overall. On the Sunday morning everything was looking good. But just as the team was enjoying breakfast and contemplating 10th overall and 6th in class, the problems started. First, the replacement of a broken seat bolt cost five laps, dropping the team to 12th. Then an off-track excursion into the wall at 11.30am was followed by a time-consuming recovery. Despite speedy pitwork the time taken to fix a damaged wing and replace a radiator dropped the NMR Aston back down to 20th. 22 The car returned to the track looking a little battle-scarred, but the next three hours were extremely difficult for everyone on the now very greasy and still wet circuit. According to Sarah B-B, “Conditions were almost impossible, I’ve never known a track so slippery”. NMR finally made it to the finish in 22nd overall and 13th in class, having completed exactly 500 laps – almost 1,600 miles in a day, 15 hours of which were wet! NMR hopes to improve on this year’s performance with a return to the Britcar 24hr next year, provisionally set for 1st-2nd October 2011. nEW RACER tO gUn FOR OUtRIght VICtORy Aston Martin announced in September that it would return to the Le Mans 24 Hour race in 2011 with a new LMP1 racer. The Gulf Oil liveried car is being designed from the ground up with an open cockpit monocoque chassis and a new, purposedesigned petrol-powered race engine. Under the ACO’s new technical regulations , the company now has the opportunity to compete for top honours at Le Mans against even the diesel-engined competitors. Aston Martin Chairman, David Richards said: “We still want to achieve our ultimate goal of winning the 24 Hour race overall to bring the title back to Britain, but in recent years it’s been impossible for petrol cars to compete on equal terms with the diesels. However, we now have assurances from the ACO that they will properly balance the performance of these new cars. Under these circumstances we’re developing Aston Martin’s first purpose-built racing chassis and engine for more than 50 years. It will still be a David and Goliath fight against the massive resources of our competitors, but we’re accustomed to this and relish the challenge.” Work on the new chassis and engine has been progressing for several months at Aston Martin Racing’s headquarters in fuLLbore Banbury, UK and the first of a limited number of six cars will run in early 2011. The company will remain committed to developing racewinning GT cars based on its road cars and it remains the only manufacturer to offer a racer for every category from GT1 to GT4. Aston Martin’s first and only outright victory at Le Mans was in 1959 with the DBR1 of Roy Salvadori and Carroll Shelby. Since 2004 Aston Martin Racing has enjoyed multiple factory and customer wins around the world including two GT1 class victories at Le Mans in 2007 and 2008, and an overall Le Mans series win in 2009. See how the new car performs at Le Mans with CTR Events. Or full details of our Le Mans hospitality see page 19.
MOTORSPORT DOnIngtOn PARK gt4 ChALLEngE FInALE Competing in the final round of the 2010 Aston Martin GT4 Challenge, Nicholas Mee Racing ended the season on a high note with a well-deserved podium finish at Donington Park on 9th October. NMR welcomed two new drivers; Alastair James, who was nearing the end of his first season of competitive racing, and his experienced team-mate, Charlie Hollings. The half-hour qualifying session was interrupted by an accident involving the Aston Martin Design car driven by Engineering Director Chris Porritt, but when the session finally restarted Hollings did a fantastic job by posting the second fastest lap and this ensured an advantageous front-row start on the 13-car grid. Alastair James started the 2-hour race, and, despite his limited experience, he enjoyed a superb stint by resisting the challenge of Leo Mansell, son of former World Champ Nigel, and dealing 23 with slower traffic and a safety car period before handing over to Hollings at the end of the first hour. Hollings immediately found his pace and retained second position for the majority of his stint but, with around 20 laps remaining, he was unable to fend off series regular Bernard Santal driving a larger-capacity 4.7-litre car. Hollings subsequently brought the NMR car home in a safe third place for a well-celebrated podium finish. Commenting on the year, Team Principal Nicholas Mee said, “Throughout our sometimes trying season of sportscar racing, the whole team performed brilliantly, particularly in the gruelling Dubai 24hr event where we also celebrated a podium finish. The difficult circumstances that arise in endurance races can be uniquely challenging, but the team has risen to those challenges to produce some excellent results”. nmR gOES EnDURAnCE KARtIng In early December Nicholas Mee Racing’s drivers, management, engineers, mechanics, pit crew, refuellers, helpers, back-room boys and hospitality girls all converged on a chilly evening at Formula 1 Karting’s indoor circuit near Heathrow. Ten teams then battled it out in a 1.5hr endurance race in new, LPGpowered 200cc Biz karts. To say that the event was competitive would be an understatement as much of the driving was of the ‘kill or be killed’ variety. The most obvious early exponent of this ‘take no prisoners’ style was pro-racer Anthony Reid, although his extremely determined approach to overtaking was soon mirrored by several others. Following a Le Mans start and 217 laps (some 76 kms) of frantic karting, NMR’s Commercial Director Neal ‘Elbows’ Garrard and Lawrence Spires of Team 6 crossed the finish line in first, two laps ahead of Team 10’s Graham Horgan and Alistair James, who in turn were just one lap in front of Team 9 with drivers Tim fuLLbore Collins and former British, European and World karting star, and NMR driver, Charlie Hollings – who recorded the fastest lap of the race. Team 6 (Sarah Bennett-Baggs, Dominic Ede and Tom Stewart) was the first three-driver team home, finishing another lap down in fourth after an epic, 40-minute non-stop final stint by NMR driver Bennett-Baggs. To underline the level of competitiveness, just 0.9 of a second marked the difference between every team’s fastest lap, and yet despite the close rivalries there were no major incidents and the emergency services weren’t called upon.
Page 2 and 3: MEE SPEAK Short days and long, dark
Page 4 and 5: NEWS AStOn COOLESt, AgAIn In Septem
Page 6 and 7: FEATURE VANQUISHING POINT... 9 Word
Page 8 and 9: FEATURE : KATIE, KERMIT & KILOMETRE
Page 10 and 11: GARRARD’S GEMS + HOT LIST gARRARD
Page 12 and 13: WhAt’S In StOCK AStoN mArtiN V8 V
Page 14 and 15: FEATURE 9 fuLLbore rOAd rAcEr Words
Page 16 and 17: FEATURE : ROAD RACER 16 engine was
Page 18 and 19: CTR EVENTS 2011 18 EXCLUSIVE DRIVIN
Page 20 and 21: ASTONSTORE SPOTLIGHT + ASTON MARTIN

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