Darren has two podium finishes

Darren Turner and Tomas Enge are now firmly on the FIA GT1 World Championship points table after two incredible runs to second in both of this weekend’s races at Brno in the Czech Republic.

Darren started the qualifying race from third, dropping a place at the start to his good friend Peter Dumbreck in the Nissan GT-R. He and Dumbreck ran bumper-to-bumper throughout the first stint, providing some thrillingly close racing for the viewers. After an excellent pit-stop, Darren’s hand over to Tomas leapfrogged the No.7 into second place where they stayed until the finish.

The start of today’s main race didn’t go quite to plan when some confusion caused Enge to drop right back to 16th place on the first lap. He immediately got stuck into his comeback drive and was up to 10th by the time the pit stop window opened and this is where it all turned around.

The Safety Car was out on track as the pits opened so all but six of the GT1 cars dived into the pit lane to do their driver change. Darren jumped in and, with the Young Driver AMR team being quick on their toes in the pits, he rejoined the race in second place!

The race order was now the Ford GT of Thomas Mutsch, Darren’s Aston Martin and Peter Dumbreck’s Nissan GT-R. In a remarkable demonstration of how evenly-matched these cars are, those three never had more than a second between them until the chequered flag fell at the end of the race.

Rowan Atkinson to drive Aston Martin GT4

Rowan Atkinson will team up with Prodrive and Aston Martin chairman, David Richards, to race an Aston Martin Vantage GT4 at the second round of the Aston Martin British GT4 Challenge at Silverstone on May 22.

Richards, who won the World Rally Championship in 1981 as a co-driver, has been eager to get behind the wheel of Aston Martin’s latest customer race car. “I raced an old DB3S at Goodwood and while I really enjoyed it, my wife wasn’t too happy as the car had little in the way of modern safety features,” said Richards. “When we launched the new GT4 Challenge series this year, I thought it would be a great opportunity to go racing in something much safer.”

It was Richards’ idea to introduce the new Aston Martin British GT4 Challenge as a place for owners of the Vantage GT4 and N24 to compete on a level playing field. “After testing the new car and finding out how much fun it is to drive, all I needed was a partner, as there was no way I was going to survive two hours behind the wheel on my own,” he said. “I was speaking to Rowan recently, who has raced Astons in the past, and he was up for the challenge, so we thought we would give it a go together.”

Atkinson has yet to drive the Vantage GT4, although a joint test session for the pair is planned on Friday May 21 at Silverstone. They will be among an expected grid of 15 cars at the Silverstone race, which takes place the next day and is the second of the six round series, which commenced at Snetterton in April.