Vantage GTE
launched earlier this week, Aston Martin made a point of telling us that the race car's development had already accrued over 13,000km of testing - now Gaydon has released a specially-commissioned film to tell the 18-month story of its journey from concept to chequered-flag taker.
Certainly the firm has made no bones about the importance of developing the GTE side-by-side with the new road car. "We decided to replace the current Vantage road car and - since it's really necessary to take race technology from the track to the road and from the road to the track - it's really important that we design both simultaneously. It's always important that you have a champion and Vantage is our champion," said Aston CEO, And Palmer.
This is undeniably true: 36 of the manufacturer's 50 international race wins have been claimed by the model; not least in June when Darren Turner, Jonny Adam and Daniel Serra took a memorable class win at Le Mans - an event which apparently saw the new GTE's development team effectively down tools to support the pit lane effort.
Aston Martin Racing - based in Banbury - will expect nothing less from its latest car, and having already spent considerable time at Navarra and Sebring, has already described its reliability as being "exceptional straight out of the box". We'll find out first hand if this means repeat success against Ferrari, Porsche, Ford, Corvette and BMW at Le Mans next year.