In 2018, Chris and Mika Brown will be racing in a brand new BMW M4 GT4. The car arrived just a short week ago from Germany before heading out for its first track action on 28th March 2018.

The car is yet to have its livery added, but still looks stunning.

The first 400km of the car needs some bedding in work, both for the car in general and the brake pads. As such, the drivers had to keep the car below 5500 revs for the whole day. Not ideal, but lap times showed that when its fully firing it is going to be quick. Next stop, GT Cup.

2017 is history, as is the Aston Martin GT4. The car served the team extremely well, but ultimately it was too slow and heavy for where they want to be. Add into that having to spend a small fortune to fix anything on the car that breaks and its a no-brainer.

2018 is a new season, and as such is bringing in a new car. All will be revealed in a few days time at Donington circuit on the 27th March, so make sure to check back or visit the driver profiles for any announcements.

After a long winter break and a dissatisfactory end to crummy 2016 season, driver pairing Chris and Mika Brown were ready to get back behind the wheel of the Aston Martin Vantage GT4 and get racing again. An albeit ‘interesting’ track day at Oulton Park a few months previous was not going to help much so it was back to square one of learning which pedal does what.

The weekend began with a track day on Friday 17^th March for Chris and Mika to get used to the set up and Donnington park circuit. Grey clouds were an all day presence but thankfully no rain fell and a decent days practice in the dry ensued. Add in taking some friends round to experience the thrill of the car and you have a pretty relaxed day all round. More importantly, nothing was broken and no damage done.

Race day on Sunday was an early start for all to get the kit ready for a scrutineer who thought it best five people from one car (of which there were a total of 400 cars on the race day) take all their kit down one by one to scrutineering. Potentially the most time efficient method possible for the drivers and teams of 400 cars who all want to get on with the days racing.

Because the race was 120mins long the team preached one thing; get to the finish. There was no point in wrecking the car in qualifying or the start of the race, so the pairing took qualifying relatively easy (without getting a clean lap on the 38 car grid) and still pulled out an 8^th, which was soon improved to 7^th after the race leader was put to the back of the grid. Its important to mention that all cars at this meeting had to meet certain power to weight ratios to ensure racing all round was as fair as possible. After adding in 150kg of metal plates to the car it was placed into the top category and both were happy with 7^th on the grid.

With the distance of the race, it was decided that Chris should go first for his more patient approach. At the second time of asking, 38 cars shot down to turn one in a cloud of dust and rubber and it was hard to tell who was where. When everything settled, Chris came back round in 12^th spot but only a short way behind the front few. After settling in Chris managed to consistently single out and pass opponent drivers one by one almost every other lap to work his way back up to sixth within 30mins. Incidents with the cars at the front of the race saw the 22GT car pushed up to fourth at the hour mark for the swap over. Chris was catching third place and, although he pays the bills, was reluctantly pulled in to swap for Mika.

Mika got back out in fourth place with a white BMW catching up behind. In the process of trying to put some ground between himself and the chaser, Mika moved the car up to P2 when a safety car was pulled out. This worked in their favour by moving them a few seconds behind the leader, but also allowed P3 to close in slightly. A poor restart from cars in-between allowed the leader to get away slightly and the chaser to close in. A battle ensued for a few laps before the chasing BMW put his car into the gravel and had to serve a stop-go penalty for a pit stop infringement. Mika was catching the leader and it was looking like they may have a stab at P1 but a puncture with 10mins to go ultimately dashed those dreams. A seriously quick tyre change (using a front right tire on the front left) put the team back out in P3 where they ultimately finished one lap later.

The scenes in the pit lane after the race showed how much the result meant to everyone, especially after having a crappy season last year. It was a well earnt podium and one that came from following pre-race tactics to the tee. Who knows what would have happened without the puncture, but for the now everyone is ecstatic with third.

Chris and Mika ventured to the scintillating area of Corby on the 17th-19th June to take on what was a new track for them; Rockingham. It was the usual scenario with the pairing having testing on Friday the 17th with driver coach Michael Bentwood to give them some experience of the course. Both drivers were very vocal of their opinions of the course, mostly negative, but both made over 20 seconds (!) improvement on their lap times throughout the day.

With Mika having to miss the two Saturday sprint races to go and watch some polo (yes you read that right, he swapped car racing for polo) it was down to Chris to hold down the fort and take on both races. The first sprint race was just a bit disappointing, with Chris not being able to hold pace with the other cars and the team being at the back of the race again. It was clear once the driver got out the car that he was unhappy with how things are going in terms of always being at the back. And you can’t blame him really. With the pairing vastly under-experienced compared to most of the other drivers they will always be at a disadvantage. Combine that with the Aston Martin GT4 being distinctly heavier and less powerful than all the other cars on the grid and you’re looking at a very tough racing situation. But then you can look at it another way; you’re out driving a race car instead of sitting at home and that puts it into perspective really. Regardless of where you are, the experience of driving one of those cars is unparalleled fun.

Anyway moving on from today’s philosophical enlightenment, the second sprint race of the day Chris really stepped up his pace and set the fastest lap of the weekend for the pair, just dipping into the 1:28 region and even going quicker than Michael did in his short session in the car (‘ave it). He also managed to avoid a massive pile up that claimed multiple cars on the grid just after the second corner. Things were looking good for the Pit stop race on Sunday after the amount of time Chris had had in the car.

With Mika rocking back up to the circuit like a careless teenager 15mins before qualifying it was full guns go from the start. Chris did the usual three laps required then handed over to Mika in order for him to gain some more track time. He put this to very good use by managing to have an extremely hairy moment on the inner track but avoided any damage and any walls for now (side note: it was a year to the absolute day that Mika had quite a significant crash at Le Mans so nerves were a little higher than usual).

Moving into the race the usual tactics were employed with Chris taking the first stint with Mika taking the second and splitting the time exactly down the middle. Chris put in a fantastic first stint with consistent lap times and driving throughout, and brought us into the swap with a 20s advantage over the next Aston Martin. Mika managed to stretch this lead to just over 22s before the other Aston decided to start putting in some very quick lap times out of nowhere. It was set up to be a great race with the two Astons head to head for the final 3 minutes of racing. Unfortunately, after defending one corner very nicely Mika slipped up and span the car at Tarzan, allowing the other Aston to come through and putting the race away for the 22GT pairing. Mika was visibly pissed off after getting out the car which is understandable, but it’s all still a learning experience to move on from.

Next up is the single day at Oulton park, a track where both Chris and Mika made their car racing debut so both drivers are extremely excited to get back.

Good day testing on The Silverstone National circuit, if a bit busy on the track. Only four 35min sessions, and a couple of red flags meant we didn’t get as many laps is as we’d have liked.

No major upgrades to the car, just an update to the dash software. AMR helpfully sent it back blank, but Jamie Leach sorted that for us.

First session started on Toyo’s while getting the race-heads back on. But quite severe understear pushed us to change to the Pirelli slicks pretty quickly.

Many thanks to the gentle tutelage of Michael Bentwood who helped Mika down to laps of 1:02/1:03 and Chris down to 1:03/1:04’s.

Now we just have to stay off the brakes at Stow!