Lola-Aston Testing for Le Mans

Postcard from Paul Ricard

By Chris Rosamond / Monday, 9 March 2009 / Loading comments

This terrific set of images dropped into our mailbox this morning courtesy of Aston Martin Racing.

The pics reveal the team’s Lola-Aston V12 Le Mans racers tearing-up the track during the first official session of Le Mans testing at the Paul Ricard circuit in France yesterday. The two-day test - which continues today – is our first chance to drool over the evocative blue and orange Gulf liveried LMP1 Astons ‘in the flesh’, and don’t they look the part!

According to Autosport’s newshound on the ground at Paul Ricard, the cars have been running well with no problems. Aston Martin Racing boss George Howard-Chappell told the magazine things were ‘very good so far’.

‘It’s really good to have two brand new cars razzing round the track without problems. The cars don’t seem too bad straight out of the box and we’ve hardly touched them since we arrived,’ he said.

Autosport also spoke to Stefan Mucke, the first Aston driver to get to grips with the new car in yesterday morning’s session.

‘The car feels really good and we’ve only had a few little issues. The time was nothing special; the important thing is to get all the systems running correctly,’ Mucke told Autosport.

For the record, Mucke’s best session one time of 1:43.669 was more than 1sec behind the fastest Courage-ORECA car. Aston has promised us a full update on progress when the session has ended.