What's the news?
Aston Martin Racing marks its 10th anniversary in 2014 and is running the company's largest motorsport programme to date. Competing in long distance events around the world the company has entered four cars in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) while for the Le Mans 24 hours seven cars will line up on the starting grid. The team will also be competing in 24-hour events at the Nurburgring and Spa.
For all races Aston Martin is using V8 and V12 versions of the Vantage. The V8 Vantage GTE is entered in the WEC, which is the backbone of the year's activities. This year's entries are number 97, the Gulf liveried Vantage driven by Darren Turner and Stefan Mucke, and car 99 in Bamboo Engineering colours with Aston Martin Racing's newest signings Fernando Rees, WTCC driver Alex MacDowall and Craft Racing AMR's Darryl O'Young.
Entering only in selected rounds is number 95 - the Young Driver car with an all Danish line-up of David Heinemeier-Hansson, Kristian Poulsen, Christoffer Nygaard and Nicki Thiim. A fourth car will compete in the GTE-am class with Canadian Paul Dalla Lana sharing the wheel with other drivers still to be confirmed.
Le Mans is the fourth round of the WEC and the full entry will be confirmed nearer the time. One famous name returning to Aston Martin for 2014 is Bruno Senna. V12 Vantages will run in the Spa 24 Hours and Nurburgring 24 Hours (N24).
Aston Martin Racing is in the third year of a five-year plan to win the Nurburgring endurance event. The Bilstein sponsored Vantage will be driven by works drivers Turner and Mücke along with five-times N24 winner Pedro Lamy.
Anything else?
The Aston Martin GT4 challenge will be running as a support race at British GT Championship events. In addition a North American GT4 challenge launches this year.