Drivers Revealed for Volante Rosso Aston Martin Effort

Volante Rosso has announced that Ben Porter and Alex Gardner will share driving duties aboard its newly-acquired Aston Martin Vantage GT3 ahead of next week’s Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS round at Queensland Raceway.

Experienced GT racer Porter and rising star Gardner will fight for overall honors in the top Pro-Am class as Volante Rosso makes its first appearance of the season after missing the opening two rounds at Phillip Island and The Bend.

Gardner, who steps up to GT3s after winning last year’s Radical Australia Cup title at the age of 16, handled shakedown duties at Sydney Motorsport Park on Friday at the wheel of the team’s ex-IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship Vantage GT3.

“The step is quite large from a Radical to a GT3,” said Gardner. “It’s a big progression and jump, but the team is confident that I’ll be able to do it.

“It’s really exciting as well to do it at such a young age, these cars are what people strive to drive in their career and to do it so early is a great opportunity that I’m really grateful for.

“As a race driver you want to go out there and win, but for me this is a big step. I just need to make sure that I jump in the car, learn everything first and take it easy, a similar approach to what I took with the Radical last year at Round 1.

“I’ve got no real expectations from my side on results, I’m just looking forward to getting o9n track and seeing how it goes.”

Porter’s Fanatec GT Australia campaign comes in addition to his existing commitments in the Asian series, where he shares a Porsche 911 GT3 R with Andrew Macpherson.

“To get the call up to run the Aston Martin is super cool,” Porter commented. “It’s a car that has always been fast overseas where I usually run and I’m excited to get behind the wheel of it here in Australia.

“I’ve had a chance to look at an Aston Martin plenty of times. The Aston Martin appears very strong and this generation of Vantage I was running against it last year where it was a serious title contender. I think we’ve got a pretty good package.

“Until we get in and drive it we don’t know where we stand with it, but we have a very good engineering team surrounding the car, so I don’t think it’ll take us too long to get a good set-up. I can’t see why we won’t be reasonably competitive in the Aston Martin.”

Volante Rosso’s Aston Martin will run alongside a Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo for Chris Batzios and Ross Poulakis entered in the Am class.