Gabriel Aubry hopes his participation in Sunday's rookie test at the Bahrain International Circuit leads to the start of a relationship with a manufacturer, which the Frenchman says will aid him in his goal to become a professional driver.
The silver-rated Frenchman spent time with Aston Martin Racing at the test session, driving the #95 Aston Martin Vantage AMR. Aubry currently races for Jackie Chan DC Racing in the championship's LMP2 category. When Aubry sat down with Motorsport Week to discuss the test, he explained his reasoning for completing the day with the British squad.
"The reason for this test is to get closer to a manufacturer," Aubry said. "My goal to be a professional within the next two years and obviously, all the manufacturer drivers are professional drivers, so this is why I approached Aston Martin to do the test. So I'm very thankful that they accepted me into the team and welcomed me the way they did.
It was great, I had some time to learn. It was short because of the weather, actually, but it was very valuable information for me on how to drive a GT. I had no idea what to expect and now I know what direction you need to take as a driver, where you expect the laptime to come from, and it just shows how different it is from an LMP2 but also the single seater that I drove previously."
Aubry, who came up through GP3 before joining Jackie Chan DC Racing, clarified that the test was more focus on his long term future rather than short term gains.
"It's more about starting a relationship with a manufacturer and getting on the radar of someone rather than actually getting into the car and doing some laptimes," he continued. "That wasn't that plan, I just wanted to show the way I work, show my abilities and feedback, which I believe is one of my good points."
The 21-year-old concluded by explaining the main differences between the ORECA 07-Gibson he races in the championship and Aston Martin's GTE Pro challenger.
"The test actually went well. As I said, I didn't have much time to adapt to something that is miles different in terms of driving. What was much different was the braking. You use straight line braking so much more. Without going into too much detail, you really need to roll the car into the corner.
The mechanical grip is actually amazing. It's even quicker than the LMP2 in low speeds, so that's really the area where to need to focus and that took me a little bit of time to really adjust and do it in the right way.
But I believe once you get it right, you understand how the car works, it's really interesting to extract the very potential out of the car."
