AF Racing confirm plans for a four-car Aston Martin customer entry

Thursday saw the confirmation of the most awaited news of the season as Aston Martin confirmed their arrival in the DTM from 2019 through a customer team entry with AF Racing and their sister company R Motorsport.

Dr Florian Kamelger, founder and co-owner of AF Racing, explained that their entry in the series will take place next year, but not necessarily from the beginning of the season and that they will aim to run four cars.

“We will enter in 2019 and we will inform when we are ready, it depends a lot on development and test possibilities. We are aiming for good results and, of course, we will enter when we are ready,” said Kamelger.

“For the midterm we are thinking about four cars, it will of course depend on the stage of development, but this is our position at the moment. We will explore our options about the drivers, we have a couple of names in mind, but we will see.”

Aston Martin’s involvement in the DTM customer programme will be limited compared to its other motorsport programmes.

“Aston Martin runs their professional racing programmes through different partners. One is in the WEC with Prodrive, another is their engagement in Formula One with the Red Bull Racing car, and another is the entry in the DTM, which we are very proud to be part of this family now and we are very proud that Aston Martin trusts us and will have us as their team to race Aston Martin silhouette cars in the DTM,” said Kamelger.

The DTM car is currently under development by AF Racing’s strategic partner HWA AG, the company that has managed Mercedes-AMG’s involvement in the DTM.

“We are in a joint venture with our partners HWA AG, and Mercedes helped a lot in the initial discussions with them. Mercedes is not involved in this project. The programme is controlled by AF Racing, which has a license from Aston Martin Lagonda to run the DTM programme for them, they heavily support this,” said Kamelger.

“I want to emphasize that Mercedes has nothing to do in our association with AF Racing,” HWA’s CEO Ulrich Fritz said to TouringCarTimes. “All they did was to put AF Racing in contact with us when they started looking for a partner to enter the DTM. There were people at HWA who had been involved in the DTM for a long time and Mercedes wanted to find a solution for them.”

Aston Martin will not have any technical input in the DTM programme, with Fritz underlining that this programme will not be a works operation from the manufacturer.

“Basically, the car we are developing will have an Aston Martin silhouette and an Aston Martin badge,” added Fritz.

It had been previously rumoured that the Aston Martin entry would run Honda engines, already complying with the regulations through their programme in the Japanese Super GT, but it has been confirmed that the cars entered by AF Racing will run a unique unit developed by HWA.

“The engine will be the one we have been developing at HWA, which has nothing to do and no input from Mercedes,” Fritz explained.