Viper Niza Racing Team joins forces with Aston Martin Racing Asia
Viper Niza Racing was the first all-Malaysian team to take part in the Road To Le Mans race in 2019
Malaysian racing team Viper Niza Racing recently announced its partnership with Aston Martin Racing Asia which will see the team owned and based team arming itself with the latest generation and racewinning Vantage GT3 and GT4 cars to spearhead its regional and international racing campaign in the GT Sports Car class.
As a partner team of Aston Martin Racing Asia, Viper Niza Racing will also be managing and providing services for customer racing programs.
The team will be led by owner, principal and driver Douglas Khoo and longtime endurance racing partner Dominic Ang. Both the Vantage GT3 and GT4 cars will carry on with Aston Martin Racing’s successful legacy in sports car racing, and is built upon the marque’s latest generation 4-litre V8 twin turbo Vantage.
The Vantage GT3 is a full-blown race car designed from the ground up and replaces Aston Martin’s most successful customer car the V12 Vantage GT3. It offers customers the latest in race car technology, embracing all the experiences from years of engineering and competing in international sports car racing. The car produces in excess of 400 kW of power and more than 700 Nm of torque.
The Vantage GT4 meanwhile, is modeled after Aston Martin’s standard production Vantage sports car and is engineered for gentlemen drivers, giving customers and enthusiasts a direct and hard-edged race car with competitive package, advanced aerodynamics and state-of-the-art safety features that can be maintained by amateur teams. It is rated at more than 350 kW of power and more than 550 Nm of torque.
The Viper Niza Racing Vantage GT3 will make its debut in the Singapore F1 Grand Prix on 1-2 October 2022 with Khoo competing in the TSS (Thailand Super Series) support race. The Series features two 25-minute sprint races around the 5.063km Marina Bay Street Circuit on Saturday and Sunday and will be held for the first time in Singapore.
Other races lined up for the near future will include competing in another two rounds of the Thailand Super Series in October and December.
The team’s best accomplishment so far has come in the touring car series with a class win at the 2019 TCR SPA500 24-Hour endurance race in Belgium behind the wheel of a Seat Leon Cupra. Viper Niza also had the distinction of competing as a wildcard entry in the Malaysian round of the 2019 WTCR World Touring Car series.
Viper Niza Racing is also best known as the first all-Malaysian team to take part in the Road To Le Mans race in 2019, which is a pre-cursor to the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans, behind the wheel of its outgoing Nissan powered Ligier JS P3 LMP3 race car.
It has also competed in three successive seasons of the Asian Le Mans Series’ LMP3 class (2017/2018, 2018/2019, and 2019/2020 seasons) with the team securing pole position twice in the 2018/2019 season.
That being said, the Aston Martin Vantage GT3 and GT4 cars currently compete in more than 20 major international race series globally which includes countries like Australia, Japan and China in the Southeast Asian region.