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The new R-Motorsport Aston Martin team claimed a dominant first victory in the Silverstone round of the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup.
The best of the Swiss entrant’s V12 Vantages shared by Matthieu Vaxiviere, Jake Dennis and Nicky Thiim led for the majority of the three-hour race on the way to a 10.9-second victory.
The win for the Jota-run car remains provisional, however, because they raced under appeal after it was excluded from qualifying.
The winning trio qualified on pole, but the Aston Martin’s data logger was found to contain no data, violating the sporting regulation that states that it must work throughout the event.
Vaxiviere converted pole into the lead of the race and held a narrow advantage over the Auto Sport Promotion Mercedes-AMG GT3 started by Adam Christodoulou going into the first round of pitstops.
Dennis dropped behind the Mercedes taken over by Tristan Vautier during the pit cycle, before quickly moving the Aston back to the front with a neat move at Luffield.
The Briton was then able to drive away from the Frenchman, extending the lead to 16s prior to handing over to Thiim.
Raffaelo Marciello lost a couple of seconds to the Aston in the second round of stops and then further ground early in the stint, before halving the gap from more than 20s in the closing stages.
The Lexus RC F GT3 took its first BGTS podium in the hands of the Swiss Emil Frey team.
Stephane Ortelli, Markus Palttala and Norbert Siedler claimed third after moving up from seventh of the grid.
The car jumped from sixth to fifth during the first pitstop sequence before Palttala moved the Japanese car ahead of the Black Falcon Mercedes driven by Luca Stolz and then the second of the R-Motorsport Astons with Alex Brundle at the wheel.
Siedler edged towards the ASP Mercedes after the final stops, before having to resist a late challenge from the WRT Audi R8 LMS driven by Dries Vanthoor.
The Audi, in which Vanthoor was joined by Christopher Mies and Alex Riberas, was a shade over half a second behind at the chequered flag.
The second R-Motosport Aston in which Brundle was joined by Marvin Kirchhofer and Maxime Martin took fifth on the final lap.
Martin was able to move the car past the Black Falcon Mercedes now with Yelmer Buurman at the wheel.
The Silver Cup class was won by Black Falcon Mercedes of Abdulaziz Al Faisal, Hubert Haupt and Giorgio Piana.
The Emil Frey Jaguar G3 of Alex Fontana, Adrian Zaugg and Mikael Grenier led the way in class until a slow second pitstop, which was followed by the right rear wheel parting company with the car.