Aston Martin pulls Danish-driven GTE Pro car from Shanghai WEC
The Danish-driven Aston Martin Vantage GTE has been withdrawn from this weekend's penultimate round of the World Endurance Championship at Shanghai
The #95 GTE Pro class Vantage, which is run by Aston Martin Racing on behalf of Danish entrant Young Driver AMR, has been pulled from the Chinese event following a sequence of poor results for the British manufacturer.
They followed changes to the Balance of Performance to Aston's disadvantage ahead of the second, five-race leg of the WEC, which were only partially redressed before the Fuji event earlier this month.
AMR team principal John Gaw appeared to blame the BoP for Young Driver boss Jan Struve's decision to scratch a car that would have been driven by Danes Marco Sorensen, Christoffer Nygaard and Nicki Thiim.
"We enter the car on behalf of Young Driver and they make the decision on whether it races or not," Gaw told Autosport.
"Jan has a lot of business interests in China which are involved in his programme and the Chinese don't like being embarrassed.
"The Aston has not been competitive at the past three races and we don't expect it to be competitive this weekend, or at least it is going to be a big challenge to be competitive."
Gaw could not say whether the #95 car would return to the series for the Bahrain finale at the end of November.
Young Driver's decision leaves two Astons in GTE Pro: the #97 driven by Darren Turner and Jonny Adam; and the #99 shared by Fernando Rees, Richie Stanaway and Alex MacDowall.
The Vantage was given a smaller-diameter engine air-restrictor prior to the resumption of the WEC after the summer break at the Nurburgring in August.
It was reduced from the 29.1mm it ran in the opening two rounds of the WEC to 28.6mm for the German race and then increased by 0.2mm for Fuji.
The original change cost the Vantage between 10 and 20bhp, according to AMR.
Porsche's 911 RSR was given a 10kg weight break for the German round, which was subsequently reduced by 5kg for Japan.
There is a separate BoP for the unique demands of the Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans.
Gaw explained he had been given reasons why there had been no further changes to the BoP for Shanghai, but said that he "personally didn't understand them".
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