Blackthorn Racing - Season So Far

Blackthorn Racing’s 2026 programme is one of the more ambitious Aston Martin customer-racing stories to follow this year. The team describes itself as an Aston Martin AMR Partner Team, working in partnership with Ecurie Ecosse, and its wider programme includes GT World Challenge Europe, Asian Le Mans Series, Michelin Le Mans Cup, International GT Open and British GT. That breadth is exactly why Blackthorn makes sense as Fuel the Passion’s featured team within the Motorsport Hub: it gives us one Aston Martin-linked outfit to follow across several different championships.

The strongest result so far came before the European season properly gathered pace. In the final round of the 2025/26 Asian Le Mans Series at Abu Dhabi, the #56 Ecurie Ecosse Blackthorn Aston Martin Vantage took GT class victory with Giacomo Petrobelli, Jonny Adam and Kobe Pauwels. The official Asian Le Mans report described it as the first win for the #56 Ecurie Ecosse Blackthorn Aston Martin, finishing ahead of the #9 GetSpeed Mercedes-AMG by just under nine seconds after a close battle to the flag. That was a significant early marker for the combined Blackthorn / Ecurie Ecosse programme.

Since then, the European campaign has been more mixed. At Paul Ricard in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup opener, Ecurie Ecosse Blackthorn showed promise early in the weekend when Giacomo Petrobelli topped the Bronze Test in the #56 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 EVO. The race itself was harder work: the #56 car, driven by Jonny Adam, Tom Wood and Giacomo Petrobelli, finished 41st overall and 10th in Bronze Cup after 172 laps. That result still put the car on the board, but it was not the sort of clean, forward-moving race the team would have wanted after such a positive early signal.

The Michelin Le Mans Cup opener at Barcelona brought a more immediate setback. Blackthorn’s #91 Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo, due to be shared by Claude Bovet and Tom Canning, was withdrawn before the race after Bovet suffered an accident during the Bronze Driver Collective Test. That meant Blackthorn’s Le Mans Cup season began without a race start, even as Aston Martin’s wider GT3 story at Barcelona was lifted by Racing Spirit of Léman winning the class. For Blackthorn, it was simply one of those difficult weekends where the race was effectively lost before it had begun.

International GT Open then provided a much more encouraging response. At Portimão, Blackthorn’s Aston Martin, driven by Charles Bateman and Henrique Chaves, did not fight for outright victory, but it did become a real Pro-Am story. The official GT Open report recorded Chaves and Bateman winning Pro-Am in Race 2, while the standings after the opening weekend placed Chaves and Bateman eighth overall on six points. More importantly for their class campaign, they left Portimão leading Pro-Am on 15 points.

So far, the honest FTP reading is that Blackthorn’s season has not been straightforward, but it has already shown why the team is worth following closely. The highs are clear: a GT victory in Asian Le Mans and a Pro-Am win in International GT Open. The difficult points are also clear: a withdrawn Le Mans Cup entry at Barcelona and a modest Paul Ricard race result after early Bronze Test pace. That mixture makes the story more interesting, not less. Blackthorn’s year is shaping up as a proper multi-series campaign, with genuine Aston Martin relevance, visible pace in places, and enough early setbacks to make the next few rounds worth watching carefully.

FTP Summary Line

Blackthorn Racing’s year has already carried both promise and frustration. The team has delivered a GT win in Asian Le Mans and a Pro-Am victory in International GT Open, but its European campaign has also included a withdrawn Le Mans Cup entry at Barcelona and a difficult GT World Challenge Europe opener at Paul Ricard. For Fuel the Passion, that makes Blackthorn a compelling team to follow: ambitious, Aston Martin-linked, active across several championships, and still very much in the process of shaping its 2026 story.

Image © Aston Martin Lagonda. Used for editorial purposes.