Barwell & the Aston Martin DBRS9 – a 4-year journey to the Spa 24 Hours

This coming weekend the Barwell Motorsport-run Aston Martin DBRS9 will be the sole representative flying the flag for the British marque in the world’s premier GT race, the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps. This race will be the highlight of Barwell’s successful relationship with the evocative 6-litre V12 DBRS9, which began at the birth of the car as a racing machine at the start of the 2006 race season. For the last two years, Barwell Motorsport has been an Official Partner Team of Aston Martin Racing (AMR), and has also run AMR’s GT1 (DBR9 V12) and GT2 (Vantage GT2 V8) products in international competition.

Barwell Motorsport has been the most prolific DBRS9 team in the car’s history, running no less than six different Aston Martin Racing-built chassis during the past four years. In ’06 we contested the inaugural FIA European GT3 Championship and the British GT series using chassis numbers 1, 2, 3 and X1 (the original AMR test and development car), winning the British GT3 Class Drivers’ title with Leo Machitski. Another title came the year after, when we added chassis 10 to our stable and claimed five race victories and the British GT Teams’ Championship. Other highlights during these years included scoring the first-ever 1-2-3 ‘podium lockout’ result in British GT with our three DBRS9s, claiming the first-ever British national championship race win for a Bio-Ethanol-fuelled car, and taking DBRS9 victories in the Britcar Endurance GT series.

In 2008 we became the first, and so-far only, outfit to race a DBRS9 in the American Le Mans Series, contesting the famous Sebring 12 Hours event with chassis number 3. This year we have re-acquainted ourselves with running X1, now owned by Beechdean Ice Cream boss Andrew Howard, in the British series, and are also fittingly running what is currently the most recent car to be built, chassis 21, in the Belgian GT Championship. It is this 2009-spec car which will be entered into the Spa 24 Hours classic, with owner-driver Eddy Renard being joined by fellow Belgian pilots, Jeffrey van Hooydonck, Koen Wauters, and Julien Schroyen. So far this season Eddy’s car has been undefeated in qualifying at Spa in the Belgian series, with Vincent Vosse claiming three pole positions in a row in the faster ‘professional’ driver qualifying sessions.

We will be hoping to make that a fourth pole this weekend with the Aston Martin Brussels-supported DBRS9, when the factory Michelin tyre-shod car will contest the G3 Class (for FIA-homologated GT3 vehicles) of the Spa 24 Hours. Contesting this event will open up another chapter in Barwell’s DBRS9 history, and the story is set to continue as we are also working on making a return to the FIA GT3 Championship in the near future...