13 Jun 07
But the event gets much of its flavour from the other cars, many of them less obviously track-friendly. This year there was a Daihatsu Sirion. There were Evos and Imprezas. There were Mazda RX-7s and two generations of Suzuki Swift. There was a Mercedes 190E 2.4-16 and a 500 SEC. There were lots of Hondas, from an NSX Type-R to a Civic Hybrid, competing in one of the two alternative-fuel classes, and a Peugeot 206 CC, competing for no rational reason at all - but it completed the whole race.
And there were the Astons: four of them, all interesting, for different reasons. There was one DBRS9, a modified version of the GT3 racer, putting it roughly half way between the DB9 road car and the full GT1-specification DBR9. It was run by Aston Austria and a team called Phoenix Racing.
There was a 'customer' N24; that's the track-ready racer based on a standard European-specification production V8 Vantage. It's 250kg lighter, weighing in at 1,330kg, achieved by removing interior trim, air conditioning and airbags, and replacing the side and rear glass windows with polycarbonate panels. It gains a steel roll cage, driver's six-point safety harness, a fire extinguisher and quick-release steering wheel. It has also gained 30bhp, giving it 410bhp.
And there were two V8 Vantages run by employees of the Gaydon factory - not race professionals, but sleep-deprived volunteers with serious day jobs who are doing this for fun and to see what it can teach them about their own products. They did it last year with one Vantage and a driver line-up that included Aston's boss, Ulrich Bez. Dr Bez is back, and he's opted to drive the new car: a Sportshift version, with the same gearbox as the car I drove over in.
