For supercar buyers, your track toy is perhaps the ultimate dream, and the new Aston Martin GT4 might just be the prettiest of them all. Based on the recently revealed, new Aston Martin Vantage, the GT4 has been developed by the people over at Aston Martin Racing (AMR) following the tightly bound regulations of the GT4 racing class. That means the Vantage GT4 develops 470bhp (compared to 656HP in the production car) but the weight-saving measures being added in will mean an excellent power-to-weight ratio.
“The new Vantage GT4 is very much an evolution of the previous car,” explains Aston Martin Head of Endurance Motorsport, Adam Carter. “Closer synergies between Aston Martin’s Road and race car programmes have enabled AMR to capitalise upon improvements made to the new Vantage Road car for increased speed and efficiency while retaining the core qualities that made the outgoing GT4 so popular with teams and drivers.”
These strict regulations mean that the GT4 Vantage remains very close to its production sibling, with the race car sharing around 80 per cent of the road car’s structural and mechanical architecture. The most important aspect of this is the bonded aluminium chassis, which is fitted with a full custom roll cage to comply with stringent safety requirements before the bodywork is attached.
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The 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 engine and transmission are of course, both based on the Vantage Road car components, the primary changes being to the electronic control systems; the former running a Bosch Motorsport ECU with bespoke software developed by AMR; the latter installed with ZF/AMR Motorsport software to control the automatic transmission.
This new software tweaks the eight-speed transmission into a six-speed paddle shift without an auto mode – locking out the seventh and eighth gears which are road-going overdrive ratios.
Other changes include the engine’s management and turbo control systems which have been tuned to meet strict Balance of Performance criteria defined by GT4 championship organisers. Here, the gearshifts are tweaked to be more aggressive and run motorsport-specific traction control. The Vantage GT4 cockpit also features the latest Bosch BDU 11 display, which replaces the road car’s instrument display.
Everything is regulation-driven, including chassis modifications where inboard suspension mounting points have been kept as standard with only some changes being done to the suspension linkages. Of course, there are now 18-inch forged aluminium wheels which are much smaller than the 21-inch found on the road-going version.
Finally, there are the new two-way adjustable KW dampers which have been kept to make the car more exploitable on the track yet also keep its approachability amongst drivers.
Visually, it’s a leaner and meaner avatar of the Vantage with the bonnet being changed along with a larger front splitter and the addition of a new rear wing. The result is an increase in downforce and a reduction in drag compared to the previous Vantage GT4.
The new Vantage GT4 recently made its international racing debut in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge event at the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona meeting, in Florida, USA.
AMR says that it has a healthy order back of more than 40 units for customer racing teams in 2024 already and while prices have not been revealed, expect to pay a fair chunk more over the road-going version to have your own Aston Martin racer.
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