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Porsche Team D’station Switches to New Aston Martin Vantage

D’station switches Super GT program to Aston Martin from Porsche; signs de Oliveira…

Photo: Aston Martin

Porsche customer team D’station Racing has switched to the new-generation Aston Martin Vantage GT3 for this year’s Japanese Super GT championship.

D’station, which contested the last two seasons of the series with a Porsche 911 GT3 R, will bring Aston Martin back into Super GT for the first time in seven years with its single-car entry.

The team, operated by KTR, will become an official Aston Martin Racing partner outfit while the entry will be known as D’Station Racing AMR.

Tomonobu Fuji will return to the team’s driver lineup, sharing the car with former Nissan GT500 ace and new signing Joao Paulo de Oliveira.

De Oliveira announced last month that he would no longer be a part of the Japanese manufacturer’s top-level Super GT program after 13 seasons and nine victories.

The full-season pairing will be joined by Aston Martin factory driver Darren Turner for the Fuji 500-mile race in August.

“We are very proud to race with Aston Martin in the Japanese Super GT championship,” said team president Satoshi Hoshino.

“As a team, we believe the Vantage GT3 can lead us to great success and we are excited to be playing a part in the new Vantage racing story from the beginning of its career.”

D’station finished ninth in the 2018 GT300 standings with Fuji and Porsche factory driver Sven Mueller taking a season-best result of second in the Okayama opener.

The last team to run an Aston Martin in Super GT was Japanese squad A Speed, which fielded a previous-generation Vantage GT3 in select races of the 2012 campaign.

“We are delighted to welcome D’station Racing to Aston Martin and to include it within our essential group of race partner teams that will compete with the new Vantage GT3 internationally,” said AMR president David King.

“We’re very proud of the fact that an Aston Martin is once again racing in such a prestigious and important series as Japanese Super GT, and it is further evidence of our expanding motorsport and customer racing activities around the world.

“It will also help to further the message of our growing AMR Performance brand of Aston Martin road cars and services, and we see Japan as a very important market for this.”

Daniel Lloyd is a UK-based reporter for Sportscar365, covering the FIA World Endurance Championship, Fanatec GT World Challenge Europe powered by AWS and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, among other series.

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