Young Driver AMR strong second in Belgium

Two six hour races of the FIA World Endurance Championship are in books now and so far, Young Driver AMR and it ´s all Danish driver line up of Christoffer Nygaard, Kristian Poulsen and Allan Simonsen have been the strongest team in the GTE-Am-class.

#95 Aston Martin Racing Aston Martin Vantage V8: Christoffer Nygaard, Kristien Poulson, Allan Simonson

Photo by: James M. Holland

After two consecutive podium finishes, Young Driver AMR is leading the championship in both the teams and drivers category before the next round, the 24h of Le Mans, which is considered at the pinnacle of endurance racing.

The qualifying session already went perfect for Young Driver AMR/Aston Martin Racing. Nygaard and Simonsen put the V8-powered Aston Martin on class pole in the qualifying. In the race, starting driver Allan Simonsen lead in the opening two laps, before a Ferrari overtook the Dane and went into the class lead.

After the first hour of racing, luck wasn’t on the side of Young Driver AMR. Simonsen handed the Aston Martin to Nygaard just before the Safety-Car came out. The class leader pitted during the Safety-Car-period, which gave the Young Driver AMR-Aston Martin a disadvantage of almost one complete lap.

Thing didn’t went any better after the restart, when Nygaard was clipped by a Le-Mans-Prototype and spun. Luckily, there was no damage to the pale blue Aston Martin. Nygaard dropped to fourth position, but subsequently fought back to second place.

Kristian Poulsen then drove a very strong double stint in the middle part of the race, before single stints of Nygaard and Simonsen concluded the race. After six hours of racing with zero technical troubles, Nygaard/Poulsen/Simonsen finished in second position.

"I’m very satisfied with the result today", Young Driver AMR´s Jan Struve said after the race. "We have now good points in the bag and are well prepared for Le Mans. Everybody did a perfect job again today, the mechanics, the engineers and the drivers. After Silverstone the team showed again a very strong performance and now we travel now quite optimistic to Le Mans."

Next stopp for Young Driver AMR: Official test day of the 24h of Le Mans/France, June 9th.

Christoffer Nygaard: "The race went a bit too exiting for me, when a LMP-car touched me. But luckily, that didn’t cause damage to our car. Today we didn’t had so much luck as in Silverstone, but proved that we can fight very hard when things are not going our way.

We lost some time during the Safety-Car period, but some times you have luck with Safety-Car and sometimes not. Congratulations to the Ferrari boys, there were really quick today. We took good points for second place, one extra point for the pole position and are now ready to attack at Le Mans."

Kristian Poulsen: "The race was very good today. We had a very fast and consistent race car. Second place is okay, we scored good points and are well prepared for Le Mans now."

Allan Simonsen: "It was an really interesting race. The Ferrari is obviously very fast now, and we have a little bit of work to do before Le Mans. But we are leading the championship. Today, the Ferrari was just faster, I think they didn’t show everything at the last round at Silverstone."

Young Driver AMR