Simply Abu Dhabi XXXI

2 6 6 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I S IMPLY CARS By Dami en Re id I know the 4.692km Portimão racetrack, in the Algarve region of Portugal, fairly well having tested numerous GT and racecars there over the years and I love it. It’s among the top three tracks alongside Spa- Francorchamps in Belgium and Mount Panorama, Bathurst in Australia. Inmy eyes, they are equally first with none better than the other. I thought that I also knew the weather reasonably well, being fine and sunny every time I’ve been there, so the prospect of spending a good eight hours on track with the all-new, twin- turbocharged, v8 Aston Martin vantage had me salivating for weeks in anticipation. What I wasn’t prepared for was arriving at a damp and rain- soaked Algarve with thunderous black clouds overhead which had dumped buckets of rain over the region for 23 days straight. With the sun peeking through and even a rainbow in the distance, I was hopeful things would get better as I didn’t want to be the journo who’d go down in automotive writing folklore (oh yes, we have one) as the one who binned a AEd660,000 Aston on a wet track in Portugal. vantage is possibly the most important car for Aston Martin as it took the mantle fromdB9 as the volume car in the range when it appeared in its last iteration back in 2005. AstonMartinvantage