Jamie Chadwick becomes Aston Martin junior driver

The 20-year-old, who won the GT4 class in the 2015 British GT Championship for the marque, has been made an Aston Martin Racing junior and will undertake multiple rounds of the VLN long-distance championship on the Nurburgring-Nordschleife around her appearance in the 24 Hours.

Chadwick will race in the blue-riband enduro on June 22/23 aboard a second-generation Aston Martin Vantage GT4 run by a team from the AMR Performance Centre based at the Nurburgring.

She will share one of its two GT4 entries with Ross Gunn, her team-mate at Beechdean-AMR in 2015, Nurburgring 24 Hours debutant Alex Brundle and Nordschleife expert Peter Cate.

It will be Chadwick's second appearance in the 24 Hours in a factory car: last year she raced a Vantage GT8 run out of Aston's development facility.

Her first race as a factory driver will be round three of the VLN at the Nurburgring on April 27.

AMR president David King said: "Jamie is one the brightest talents in the British junior ranks and must be considered among the favourites in the exciting new W Series.

"We"ve been keeping a watchful eye on her progress and working with her ad hoc since she won the British GT4 title in one of our cars [pictured above], and it was clear that the time was right to bring her more formally into the fold so that we may play a deeper role in her career development."

The second Vantage GT4 will be driven by AMR factory driver Darren Turner, Top Gear presenter Chris Harris, Chris Goodwin, who races a Vantage GT3 in the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup, and German Christian Gebhardt.

King said that the driver line-up in Aston's two cars "offers up the perfect opportunity for us to demonstrate the strengths of the Vantage in the fiercest endurance racing environment available".

The AMR Performance Centre squad will also run a Vantage GT8 for a line-up including customer drivers Marco Muller and Tony Richards.