Brilliant maiden GTE-Qualifying for Young Driver AMR

Tomas Enge took second place in Le Mans Series-Qualifying

Paderborn / Le Castellet, 02.04.2011. [Le Mans Series]

The first qualifying of the new Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin Vantage at the Le Mans Series season opener in Le Castellet/France could have only hardly be better. Tomas Enge (CZE) qualified in the maiden qualifying session of Young Driver’s latest addition to the stable, the Aston Martin Vantage GT2, in second place in the highly competitive GTE-Pro-class. Enge will share the Aston Martin Vantage with Christoffer Nygaard (DAN) and Alex Müller (GER) in the 6-hour endurance race on Sunday.

Enge was immediately up to speed in the Aston Martin Vantage during Qualifying. After his first flying lap, he was second and even bettered the time in the following lap. Earlier in the morning, Enge scored also the fastest time during the third practise session. “We are not surprised about our good performance here”, Enge said after the Qualifying session. “After the test we had here a couple of weeks before, we knew we had a quick car and my best time in the free practise confirmed this. The performance during the qualifying session was very promising, but our main goal here is still to prepare for a possible start in the 24h of Le Mans. The most important thing is that we finish the race and collect experience with Le Mans-style racing. I hope the race will be as good as our Qualifying, then we have a fair chance for a podium finish.”

“I’m really happy with our performance here so far”, Young Driver AMR-team principal Hardy Fischer said. “The first two days at Le Castellet were very productive, now we cross the fingers for the race.”

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Start of the race is Sunday at 12.00 hours, the race will be shown live on Motors TV.

Schedule Le Mans Series 6h Le Castellet:

Sunday, 03. April
09.00 – 09.20 Warm-Up
12.00 – 18.00 RACE (6 hours)

About Young Driver AMR

Young Driver AMR was founded by Hardy Fischer and his friend and long-time associate Jan Struve in late 2009 and is representing Aston Martin as one of only two teams in the FIA GT1 World Championship with two Aston Martin DBR9. The abbreviation AMR in the team name stands for Aston Martin Racing, Young Driver AMR is the only official German partner team of Aston Martin Racing. Young Driver AMR is a sister-team of Fischer Racing and based in Paderborn. In it’s first racing season 2010, Young Driver AMR took three victories in the FIA GT1 World Championship and finished on the class podium in it’s first ever outing in the legendary 24 hours of Le Mans in France.

Info/Foto - Young Driver AMR GmbH

Going the extra mile ...

The 2011 season opened in dramatic fashion on the Yas Marina circuit, as the No. 7 Young Driver Aston Martin DB9 of Tomas Enge and Alex Muller missed its braking point on the run down to the first corner - causing an accident that not only led to the car's retirement from the Qualifying Race, but threatened its participation in the Championship Race ...

With the team facing a daunting repair job, Enge and Muller traded their race overalls for a slightly greasier ensemble as they settled in alongside the team mechanics in a scamble to ready the DB9 for the evening's hour-long race.

With drivers and team making a gargantuan effort, the car not only made it onto the Championship Race grid but excelled in the race, as Muller and Enge came through the field to finish a remarkable fourth - putting the duo seventh in the Drivers' standings, and third in the Teams'.

Alex Müller: "There was no time to be wasted and we are a team; we all wanted to be in the Championship Race so we all worked together. Sometimes it is not easy to try to help because the mechanics know what needs to be done and the way they have to do the job but we asked and they gave us work.

"I am a mechanic anyway and I did my apprenticeship at Porsche so I knew I could help if they told me what to do. I took the broken front splitter apart together with my race engineer Claude Roth, we put the new front splitter together and saved some time for the mechanics who had to do so much work!"

Tomas Enge: "I felt guilty (after missing his braking point) and I wanted to help. We didn't have much time, but we all wanted it so I asked what I could do. I was told to clean the floor of the car because it was covered in oil, I changed bolts and got more little tasks by the engineers and mechanics and in the end we were able to make the race because we all worked together as a team."

Erhard Fischer (Team Manager): "I was really surprised to see the car running just before the start of the race because it didn't look promising with such a short period to repair the damage. It was a great team effort and we are very pleased with the result of the Championship Race."

Info and Fotos FIA GT1/For Acreditated and Autorized Media Press.