LG Motorsports Set for Return with Three-Car Aston Martin PWC Effort

Photo: Aston Martin Racing

One of the most successful teams in Pirelli World Challenge history is returning to competition next year, as LG Motorsports has laid out plans for a three-car, multi-class effort with Aston Martin Vantages.

Three-time World Challenge champion Lou Gigliotti confirmed to Sportscar365 that his Texas-based squad is finalizing the purchase of an Aston Martin Vantage V12 GT3 and two Vantage GT4 cars, all from Europe, to compete in the sprint race championship in the GT and GTS classes.

Gigliotti, 64, got his first taste of the British sports car at TRG-AMR’s open test at Sebring last month and was immediately sold on the program.

“I’m getting old, so I wanted to go out and have some fun,” Gigliotti told Sportscar365. “Kevin Buckler had this test day at Sebring. My goal was to see how good the Aston was and to see if I could still go fast after taking a season off.

“It’s like golf or tennis, if you don’t swing the club or the racket, you lose a little bit. I went down there and I was fast and I felt great. I got confidence in myself and the Aston Martin was really good.”

Gigliotti said he’ll be one of the full-season drivers, likely in a GT4 car, while he continues to talk to interested parties to finalize the complete lineup.

After having successfully run Corvettes and Camaros over the last 25 years, including stints in ALMS and GRAND-AM competition, the longtime GM team moves to Aston Martins, a package which Gigliotti feels will work to their advantage.

“We normally build our own cars from scratch,” he said. “By getting Aston Martins that are already built and pretty well sorted… all we have to do is tidy up all the fine points and loose edges and make it a little bit faster from our experiences, we should have really good cars.”

The team last competed in World Challenge in 2013 with a Camaro, also in GTS, with Gigliotti scoring a pair of top-seven finishes at Circuit of The Americas that year, which marked their final event of the season.

With LG now back in the new-look GTS class, which will feature standalone races in 2015, Gigliotti is looking forward to the battles ahead.

“It’s getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “The fact that you’re getting GAINSCO in that series in the GTS class is awesome. It adds creditability to the series. If a guy goes out and does consistently well with top-5, considering the people that are running there, that’s a feather in your cap.”

Gigliotti expects to take delivery of all three Aston Martins by the end of January, with testing set to occur at MSR Houston in February prior to the season-opening round at COTA on March 6-8.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John