Heart of Racing charts progress with Aston Martin Vantage Evo

Roman De Angelis is making his third start with the new Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo this weekend in the IMSA SportsCar Grand Prix of Long Beach, partnered with Spencer Pumpelly in the No. 27. Aston Martin made some major updates to its GT3 racer, coinciding with the introduction of an updated road-going Vantage, that made its competition debut in the Rolex 24 At Daytona. With a fourth-place finish in GTD for the No. 27 at Sebring, the team is making progress in its understanding of the new car.

“We did have four years of experience with a past-generation car, so we kind of knew the window of where we wanted it to be, what worked and whatnot — lots of time to experiment with different things,” said De Angelis. “There’s still things that we need to learn as a team where the car operates in the right window and things like that. But I think every weekend, we’ll just keep progressing in that aspect. Hopefully in the next few weekends, we’ll have a car that can win races — hopefully we can do that this weekend.”

The previous-generation Vantage certainly had its successes, including a GTD victory for Heart of Racing in last year’s Rolex 24, double GTD-GTD PRO wins at Lime Rock Park (2023) and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of the Glen (2022), and the 2022 GTD championship for De Angelis. But some drivers found the car to be a challenge. According to Aston Martin Racing’s head of performance, Gustavo Betelli, a primary goal for the Evo version was to solve that issue and broaden the performance window, and the car features revised aerodynamics and suspension.

“These new generation GT3 cars are more dependent than ever on aerodynamic downforce, so we wanted to make the car more stable under braking,” said Betelli at the car’s official introduction in February. “The old car would dive a lot under braking, so we had to try and control the pitch with the rear suspension setup. But this meant it was stiff, which made it quite snappy and also over-worked the tires. Working heavily on damper tuning, we have found a much better balance with the new car so we can generate the downforce without compromising the suspension setup. The result is much-improved progression and greater stability in all conditions. It also works its tires much more evenly, so teams have more options on strategy.”