Aston Racing
In 1959, Aston won Le Mans with the DBR1.
We take it to meet its modern-day successor, the Vantage GTE
SCAN THE LIST of 1950-era Le Mans winners
and one name recurs time and again: Jaguar. Whether it was XK-120C, C-Type or
D-Type, the cars from Coventry finished first at La Sarthe more frequently than
anyone else. But, as so often is the case, the death throes of the decade
closed the chapter, like the Manson murders signaled the wilting of the Flower
Power ’60s or the fall of the Berlin Wall opened up the ’90s.
Jaguar
tried to react, but to no avail: its success wasn’t to be repeated until the
XJRs of the late 1980s took Jaguar back to the top
The foundations were laid in 1958 when rule
changes limited sports cars to 3.0 liters, outlawing the D-Type’s 3.8-litre
six. Jaguar tried to react, but to no avail: its success wasn’t to be repeated
until the XJRs of the late 1980s took Jaguar back to the top. Instead, 1959 was
to be rival Aston Martin’s year, Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori taking the
chequered flag, while Maurice Trintignant and Paul Frère brought the sister car
home in second place.
Only five DBR1s were ever built, and it’s
that rarity and that pedigree that means they’re currently valued at around £20
million (approx. R280m). Today we’ve brought the second-placed Le Mans car to
Silverstone for a tantalizing piece of historical context ahead of my own drive
in the latest GT4 Vantage racer. Most excitingly, I’ll also be getting a
passenger ride with one of Aston’s modern-day Le Mans heroes in the Vantage
GTE.
It’s still a breathtakingly gorgeous car,
the DBR1, one whose sensual curves you tower vertiginously over as if surveying
a pedal car. Then you reach inside and pull a delicate little piece of door
mechanism and fold out the door so carefully that you might be unfurling the
Dead Sea Scrolls. The open door reveals a fuel tank that snuggles up right
alongside the driver, and you climb over and sink into a seat that resembles a
giant flat-cap. You can see the space frame tubes that form the DBR1’s
underlying structure and you touch the delicate little gearlever and slip your
fingers over that broad wooden wheel with its Grip pier little studs at the
back that lend a Braille-like definition. If you’re over six-feet tall, your
head will poke out well above the truncated, curved little windscreen unless
you slump down, and you imagine sitting here in your cotton overalls and
useless little fiberglass helmet and racing wheel to wheel down the Mulsanne
Straight. You realize why Stirling Moss says he preferred to be thrown clear
than lie trapped in the burning wreckage during this era.
Around
R2m buys you this ready to race Vantage GT4
The DBR1 makes quite a contrast to the Aston
Vantage GT4 that I’m about to drive on a soaking wet Silverstone GP circuit. It
starts with the regular Aston Vantage V8 road car, but the engine’s breathed on
Aston are pretty cagey on the specifics, but suffice to say the internals are
stock. The brakes beefed up, the aero tweaked for a little more down force and
the suspension uprated and rose jointed – the bushes between the suspension
components are replaced with slop-free bearings, which would increase harshness
on the road, but add precision on the racetrack. Inside there’s a pair of
bucket seats, a roll cage, the trim is pared right back and the center console
replaced by a lightweight carbon substitute. The Vantage will cost you £129k
(R1.8m) ready to race, and you can race it in Aston’s GT4 Challenge, along with
a grid of 12-15 other racers.
No matter how closely this car relates to
its road going sibling. It still quickens your pulse when a man squeezes the
air from your lungs and tightens your harness, and you’re surrounded by the
seriousness of a racecar – the hefty steel tubes, the seat’s wings that wrap
around your head, the no-nonsense dials and switches – especially when you can
see the rain smashing down like marbles in the pit lane. Happily, this car has
race-optimized and tweak-able ABS and traction control, a brand-new set of wet
race tires and a man called Jamie Wall in the passenger seat. Wall heads up
Aston’s GT4 race program, is an ace driver and makes for a calming presence in
the cabin. I wait until we roll out into the pit lane to tell him I’ve never
driven the GP circuit. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘just take it nice and easy.’ At
least one of us is relaxed.
The circuit is a tricky mix today: the
surface is entirely slick, but there are streams of standing water in places,
and bright, low-level sunlight bounces off it, making it hard to see which way
the track goes and bringing a slightly disconcerting light at the end of the tunnel
aura to the cockpit. I build up gradually, feeding off the sensations that the
Vantage GT4 is humming with: the steering is incredibly accurate, responsive
and delicate, the brakes are strong and the tires cut easily through the
standing water, all of which endows the panic-stricken amateur with an
abundance of confidence. The track’s very slippery, though: I swear the Kerbs
have been buttered and it’s very, very easy to induce under steer on any part
of the surface, at which point on a very fast circuit like this – you’ve got a
quick hop over those slick Kerbs, a skip across the saturated grass and a jump
into a very expensive accident.
The
circuit is a tricky mix today: the surface is entirely slick, but there are
streams of standing water in places, and bright, low-level sunlight bounces off
it
I do my best to nurse the GT4 like an
alcoholic might nurse a pint on a rollercoaster, to turn the car in smoothly
and to use a high gear and steady throttle through corners before flattening
the pedal with caution, and it seems to be working. We still have four round
wheels and I can’t feel any intervention from the traction control. It does,
however, seem pretty slow. Then I up the ante and the back steps out a little
and does so very quickly, a little tap on the shoulder to remind me that,
really, I shouldn’t be going much faster than this, not with my abilities.
To be honest, these aren’t the easiest
conditions in which to assess a car such as this, but the Vantage GT4 does feel
faithful and benign, and the addition of ABS and traction control goes a long
way to making it as idiot-proof as a racecar can be. And that’s something that
can’t be said of the new Vantage GTE.
