This Aston Martin Race Car Was the Last of Its Kind. Now It Could Fetch $2 Million at Auction.

While Aston Martin has never won the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship, and currently finds itself in seventh place this season, it has fared a bit better in sports-car endurance racing. At the 24 Hours of Le Mans, for example, it has 19 class victories over the years. On May 22 in Milan, a car that was once part of the British marque’s ongoing quest for such motorsport success will cross the auction block through RM Sotheby’s—a 2008 Aston Martin DBR9 GT1.

The former GT1 class of racing, which comprised track-focused grand tourers, premiered in 1993. Aston Martin came on board in 2005 with the debut of its DBR9 GT1 at that year’s 12 Hours of Sebring, where it took the win for its class. According to the researchers at RM Sotheby’s, a DBR9 also won the GT1 group at the Nürburgring 1000 Km and achieved an outright win at the Bahrain Supercar 500, the last stop for that 2005 season’s FIA GT Championship.

The model was based on the automaker’s DB9 road car, but reimagined and redeveloped by the UK-based motorsport specialists at Prodrive, where a total of 17 examples were produced. The machines each feature a 5.9-liter alloy V-12 engine that makes about 616 hp and is mated to a six-speed sequential Xtrac transaxle.

The car on offer, chassis No. 109, is perhaps remembered less for its performance in competition than for where it fits in the DBR9 timeline. “It has historic significance being the final DBR9 chassis constructed by the famous Prodrive team,” Peter Haynes, director of Marketing and Business Development at RM Sotheby’s, tells Robb Report. “The cars were highly effective competition machines, and the example offered in Milan contested two rounds of the 2010 FIA GT1 World Championship, finishing in fifth place at Silverstone.”

Initially purchased by racer Jan Struve to be part of a privateer team, chassis No. 109 lined up on the starting grid for the first time at the 2010 FIA GT1 Abu Dhabi, under the banner of the Young Driver AMR squad. There, driven by Christoffer Nygaard and Stefan Mücke, it qualified in fourth place out of a field of 24 entrants, but failed to finish the actual race.

May of 2010 held two contests for the car. As Haynes mentions, the RAC Tourist Trophy at Silverstone saw Nygaard and Mücke finish strong, but they were not long to savor that result, as at the subsequent 1000 Km of Spa, the duo failed to finish after the car had an unplanned meeting with a wall on the 82nd lap. Chassis No. 109 never raced in a professional series after that, though it was repaired in 2011 and had restoration on its power plant done in 2014. By the following year, the car had a new steward, who it still belongs to today.

Although the car was dressed in white with red stripes and accents when competing, it is now wearing the color scheme and race number that mirrors the DBR9 that finished sixth overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2006—a tribute to that accomplishment. Regarding how the car will perform at auction, Haynes is highly confident, calling it “an undoubted star of our Milan sale,” and pointing out that “it is now offered from the care of only its second owner, and is highly eligible for historic race series such as Masters Endurance Legends.”

In 2017, RM Sotheby’s sold a 2006 DBR9 for $616,000, then, in 2023, offered a 2007 example—with extensive race provenance—that fetched €2.25 million (approximately $2.56 million today). The latter figure is closer to where chassis No. 109 is expected to be at when bidding ends, as it carries a high-end estimate of just over $2 million.

Click here for more photos of this 2008 Aston Martin DBR9 GT1.

Credit: robbreport.com