How GTE Am was won: A fitting farewell for Aston Martin’s Vantage

In the final year for the Vantage GTE, Aston Martin Racing collected its first FIA Endurance Trophy for LMGTE Am Drivers since 2014, as Paul Dalla Lana teamed up with Pedro Lamy and Mathias Lauda to claim a crown that had been several years in the making. 

Since arriving in the World Endurance Championship in 2014, Dalla Lana has won 15 times – more than anybody else over the same duration – including four this season, but while the Canadian’s speed was never in doubt, he was often beset by bad luck, with costly DNFs at the double-points-scoring 24 Hours of Le Mans causing the title to slip through his fingers in each of the past two seasons. 

A high-speed blow-out on the Mulsanne while leading that caused serious damage to the bodywork meant all hope of a good result was lost this year too, but Lamy still managed to bring the car back to the pits and reach the finish as the fourth of the WEC-registered cars. The result earned an invaluable 24 points – ironically the same total as the No.98 Aston Martin crew’s winning margin at the end of the season, albeit with two wins in hand over the 2nd placed Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Matteo Cairoli, Marvin Dienst and Christian Ried.  

AMR missed out on victory at the opening round at Silverstone when Lamy and Miguel Molina’s Spirit of Race Ferrari tangled on the final lap – handing a debut triumph to the Singaporean Clearwater Racing squad – but the No.98 trio were back to winning ways on their traditional happy hunting ground at Spa, converting pole to victory for the third successive year. 

In all, Dalla Lana and Lamy combined to qualify on pole – and score the extra point that comes with it – an impressive seven times, but together with Lauda, they had to wait until COTA to repeat their Spa maximum score as Le Mans disappointment was followed by 3rd at the Nürburgring and 2nd in Mexico. 

Prior to their victory at COTA, the No.98 AMR team trailed the ultra-consistent Dempsey-Proton Porsche crew, which won back-to-back races at the Nürburgring and Mexico. But Cairoli, Dienst and Ried would manage no better than 3rd across the final four races and were unable to fully capitalise on the AMR crew finishing 5th at Fuji, as Spirit of Race’s Molina, Francesco Castellacci and Thomas Flohr scored their maiden WEC win.

Any hint of vulnerability the No.98 team might have felt was then dispelled in China, as Dalla Lana, Lamy and Lauda took another pole and victory ahead of the Gulf Racing Porsche to carry a 10-point advantage into the final round. Last year their slim mathematical hopes were ended by engine failure in Bahrain, but they encountered no such problems this time around and ended the venerable Vantage’s WEC life with another victory in the desert. 

Cairoli, Dienst and Ried, thanks to 4th at Bahrain, held onto the runners-up place in the standings by just three points over the Clearwater Ferrari of Matt Griffin, Keita Sawa and Mok Weng Sun, while Castellacci and Flohr took fourth as a pair after factory driver Molina had been moved into the GTE Pro No.71 car at Le Mans.

The second-place finish in Fuji for Ben Barker, Nick Foster and Khalid Al-Qubaisi was Gulf Racing’s best since entering the WEC last year, and their second podium of the season after Barker and Foster took third in Mexico with Mike Wainwright. The aforementioned duo was 5th in points.