Aston Martin’s five greatest races

Le Mans, 1982 – Nimrod hunts for Le Mans success

Aston Martin finished a creditable seventh on what was at least a semi-official return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1982. But its overweight and underdeveloped Group C contender might well have ended much higher up the order.

The machine developed by Nimrod Racing Automobiles, backed by new Aston chairman Victor Gauntlett, was up as high as fourth place before the halfway mark – not bad for a car that had its roots in the decade-old Lola T70. But a misfire hit the Aston Martin-Nimrod NRA/C2 driven by Ray Mallock, Mike Salmon and Mike Phillips on Sunday morning, and the car plummeted down the order.

It was only the ingenuity and engineering nous of Mallock that got the Nimrod NRA/C2 to the finish. He rigged a repair when a fuel line broke and temporarily stranded the car in the Porsche Curves in the closing stages.

Seventh was still a decent result for one of the two Nimrods entered in the race, and it was notched up by a customer team. The Nimrod squad, founded by Robin Hamilton who'd taken Aston back to Le Mans in 1977 and '79 with a DBS V8, had lost its car on Saturday evening when the car suffered a tyre blow-out on the Mulsanne Straight. That left the team run by Viscount Downe, an Aston collector and shareholder, to fly the flag.

2005 Sebring 12 Hours – victory at the first time of asking

Finally Aston Martin had a man at the helm who wasn't blind to the motorsport heritage of the brand. Ulrich Bez, installed by Ford at the helm of the company in 2000, found a partner in Prodrive's David Richards, and they hatched a plan to put the marque back on the grid in international sportscar racing.

It wasn't a money-no-object factory motorsport programme, but the GT1 contender the British motorsport engineering specialist developed out of the all-aluminium sportscar was an immediate success. A DBR9 run by the Prodrive Aston Martin Racing squad claimed an out-of-the-box victory in the GT1 class at the Sebring 12 Hours in 2005.

More significant than the fourth place overall for the car shared by David Brabham, Darren Turner and Stephane Ortelli was the fact that it beat the might of the factory Chevrolet squad, Corvette Racing, in its backyard.

"This marks the beginning of a new era for Aston Martin," said Richards in the wake of the victory. They were prescient words. Aston's GT racing programme with Prodrive-run AMR is still racking up the victories with both factory and customer cars to this day.

2007 – Le Mans conquered again

Le Mans honours were the ultimate goal for the AMR squad, and it ticked that box in only its third year back at the Circuit de la Sarthe. Aston's challenge had wilted in the extreme heat of the 2005 race and then endured a near miss when clutch failure delayed the leading Aston three laps from home.

But in 2007, there was no stopping Aston Martin as Brabham, Darren Turner and Rickard Rydell came home in fifth place overall and a lap ahead of the best of the Chevrolet Corvettes. It was a faultless performance on a day that the winning car spent less time in the pits than any other finisher. AMR might have been rewarded with a one-two had not the second car gone off the track twice in the closing stages.

Le Mans was the AMR squad's only race of 2007, and it wouldn't be back in competition until the big race the following year. Now with its DBR9s running in the emotive colours of Gulf Oil rather than British Racing Green, the team again came out on top, only this time after a much more frantic battle with the Corvettes.

The American muscle cars had the edge on pace and could go longer between fuel stops, but the Astons had the better reliability. Brabham and Turner made it two from two, this time together with Antonio Garcia, as they just edged out the best of the Chevrolet Corvette C6.Rs.

2016 Mexico City – another world championship

The Vantage that AMR had developed ahead of the 2008 season for what was then known as the GT2 class was getting long in the tooth, though it had undergone a substantial re-design for the 2013 season and was updated again for 2016 when new regulations came into force. Yet it was still good enough for Aston Martin to take a world title in its dotage.

Danes Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen won the 2016 World Endurance Cup for GT Drivers — the GTE Pro crown by any other name — at the end of a season dominated by the Balance of Performance. The new rules were meant to make it easier to balance the variety of machinery on the grid, but it didn't quite work out like that as one marque after another took centre stage at the head of the class battle.

Aston Martin took its turn at the front during the North American leg of the championship, Thiim and Sorensen winning in Austin and the sister car of Turner and Richie Stanaway prevailing in Mexico City. The Vantage was crucially back on top at the seasonal finale in Bahrain, the 'Dane Train' sealing the crown with a second win of the season.

2008 Le Mans – pursuit of the big prize

AMR had aspirations beyond the GT classes, and when the LMP1 regulations were opened up to allow GT1 engines – and on favourable terms — the team took the plunge. A Lola powered by the 6.0-litre V12 from the DBR9 was field by Prodrive at Le Mans in 2008 under the banner of Czech entrant Charouz as a precursor to a works campaign the following year.

Prodrive reworked the Lola design for 2009 and dubbed the resulting car the Aston Martin DBR1-2 in deference to the marque's 1959 Le Mans winner. It didn't go down well with the British constructor's owner, Martin Birrane, who was insistent the car was still very much a Lola B09/60, but whatever it should have been called, it was an effective weapon.

AMR won two of the five rounds of the Le Mans Series in Europe with a car shared by Tomas Enge, Stefan Mücke and Jan Charouz against opposition that included Le Mans legend Henri Pescarolo's eponymous squad. That gave them the title at the end of a season in which they finished on the podium in each of the five races.

What they couldn't do was squeeze into the top three at Le Mans against the might of the Peugeot and Audi turbodiesels. Their fourth place, however, became the best result by an 'Aston Martin' in the French enduro since '59.

The arrival of the Valkyrie hypercar on the grid at Le Mans in 2021 might just change that…

Photography provided by Motorsport Images.