All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Aston Martin‘s design director, Marek Reichman, and their engineering manager, Chris Porritt, will be competing in the Aston Martin GT4 Challenge on August 21st at Oulton Park. The Aston Martin GT4 Challenge is a one-make race series created by the British exotic car maker.

This will be Reichman’s first real event in a Vantage GT4, despite being part of the design team with Aston Martin’s race cars including the LMP1. “The design team has been closely involved in the design of all our race cars, from the works LMP1 prototype to the Vantage GT4,” Reichman said, “but I’ve always longed to get even more closely involved and the Aston Martin GT4 Challenge provides the perfect introduction to GT4 racing for me.”

His co-driver will be Chris Porritt, Aston Martin’s engineering manager. Porritt has experience behind the wheel of a GT4-spec Aston, especially on Nurburgring, and Oulton Park is his home track. Though he’s never raced a GT4 car at Oulton Park, we’re going to guess that he’ll acclimate rather quickly.

We wish our work allowed us to race really expensive cars around on the track… oh wait, it does!

GALLERY: Aston Martin GT4 Challenge Series

[Source: MotorTrend]

Over the weekend Maserati revealed its GranTurismo MC race car at the FIA Media Days at the Paul Ricard circuit in France. The completely stripped down car will weight less than 1,400 kg (or 3,087 lbs) and while Maserati hasn’t released horsepower output numbers, they have said that the car will use the 4.7-liter Maserati V8 powerplant and boast a power to weight ratio of 3.4 kg/hp (which would put the horsepower rating at about 411 ponies).

The car will initially only be for sale directly from Maserati to race teams who intend on participating in the European FIA GT4 championship – a series in which close-to-stock vehicles participate. In 2010, however, Maserati intends to use the GranTurismo MC more extensively by organizing a one-make racing series for gentleman-drivers, much like the Ferrari Challenge or Lamborghini SuperTrofeo.

The GranTurismo MC is priced at 130,00 Euro, or roughly $170,000.

GALLERY: Maserati GranTurismo MC

Official release after the jump:

Continue Reading…