+ Two-time GT3 champion bidding farewell at the end of 2026
British GT’s most successful Am driver, Andrew Howard, will retire from full-time modern motorsport at the end of 2026.
A career spanning 27 years, 13 British GT wins across all classes and two overall GT3 drivers’ titles comes to a close at Brands Hatch on September 27 when he is due to start his 157th and final British GT race. That’s 43% of the championship’s 362 races (as it will be at that point).
Although synonymous with Beechdean and Aston Martins, his British GT adventure actually began behind the wheel of a Ferrari 360 Modena halfway through 2006 at Rockingham.
Five GTC class victories followed a year later before Howard graduated to GT3 in 2009 when Beechdean teamed up with future rivals Barwell to run a DBRS9. His maiden overall win was achieved with the same car and Jonny Adam at Rockingham two years later, albeit with Prodrive now behind the scenes.
The same duo claimed a maiden win for the new V12 Vantage the following season at the Nürburgring. It came following a sliding doors moment with Aston Martin Racing and Prodrive, who convinced Howard to cancel his order for a new Nissan GT-R. ‘R18’ – the V12 Vantage’s original development chassis – would go on to win six races and two drivers’ titles with Howard (in 2013 and ’15) whilst also becoming arguably British GT’s most iconic car.
Howard, along with Adam and Rob Collard, is one of just three drivers to have won British GT’s senior drivers’ championship on multiple occasions, and remains the only Bronze to do so. His CV also includes the 2016 European Le Mans Series crown, two Le Mans 24 Hours starts, several appearances at the 24 Hours of Spa, and victory in Britcar’s Silverstone 24 Hours with Beechdean’s GT4-spec Aston Martin, Adam, Jamie Chadwick and Ross Gunn.
His most significant recent achievement was winning British GT3’s Silver-Am title alongside Tom Wood in 2025, while he and current co-driver Gunn remain in this year’s overall championship hunt with two races remaining.
But while Howard is stepping back from driving duties, Beechdean will very much continue. The team is actively seeking drivers for the 2027 campaign in Britain and potentially further afield.
Q&A with Andrew Howard
Q: Why have you chosen to end your full-time driving career now?
Andrew Howard: “In short, despite the competitive fires burning in me just as intensely as 10 or 15 years ago, I just don’t have the time and energy to commit myself 100 per cent to racing any more. The game has moved on over the past decade and it’s clear that younger Am drivers, who can race weekend after weekend in a variety of series, train in the gym every day and spend lots of time on the simulator, are at a big advantage. If you can’t do all that, your performance suffers, and when that happens, it’s harder to enjoy it. I don’t want to stop racing completely, but I think if you’re going to see me on track in the future, it will be in historics. I still have my first racing car – a Mini Miglia racer in which I was Rookie Champion in my first year in 1999, and brought it out for a track day recently. It was so much fun to drive and it reminded me of how enjoyable it is to race for racing’s sake.”
What have been the key highlights you think of when reflecting on your career?
AH: “Racing the GTE Aston Martin was incredible; the hardest-to-drive car I’ve raced, but definitely the best and the most satisfying when it all clicks. All the titles were fantastic in their own right; 2013 in British GT because it was my first, 2015 because we just did everything right, and then in the European Le Mans Series in 2016… It’s the title we should never have won, but we dug deep, got those vital points when we needed them, and won out. From a team point of view, 2015 was remarkable because we won the GT3 and GT4 titles in British GT, I became the first two-time champion, we had the first female champion with Jamie Chadwick in GT4 and then we won the Silverstone 24 Hours with a GT4 car as well. But from pure driving, nothing beats the GTE Vantage.”
How important have the relationships with Aston Martin Racing and Prodrive been for your career behind the wheel and for the success of Beechdean Motorsport?
AH: “I can say with 100 per cent certainty that without both of then, there is no way we’d have had the success we’ve had. Winning championships in the UK and Europe and coming so close to a Le Mans podium was a true team effort and both have been integral to that. What’s great is that year on year, we’ve had faith in each other to strengthen our relationship, enter into races like the Spa 24 Hours or into complete seasons in the ELMS or GT World Challenge Europe and really push the boundaries of what we can achieve as a team. It’s been a fantastic relationship and one that I hope will continue for many more years, even with me stopping driving.”
If you could change one thing from your racing career, what would it be?
AH: “If we could have finished on the podium at Le Mans in 2017, that would have been the icing on the cake, even across everything else I’ve achieved as a driver and that we’ve achieved as a team. I’ve had podiums at Le Mans in the Le Mans Cup and other races, but we missed the chance by something like 40 seconds and finished fourth – that’s nothing in a 24-hour race. Then we missed the class win at the Spa 24 Hours last year by something like 30 seconds, which is also hard to take, but Le Mans is Le Mans and everybody knows it doesn’t get bigger than that.”
What does the future hold for Beechdean Motorsport?
AH: “We plan to continue competing in the highest level of GT3 racing possible in 2027 and are actively looking for drivers for that programme, as I’ll be taking a strictly off-track role. Whether it’s British GT or something continental will depend on the ambitions of the driver or drivers in question. We also plan to diversify into historic racing. We have some fantastic Aston Martin GT racing cars in our stable and I’d be very keen to see some of those on track. I’d like to be able to continue racing some of our historics, but we’ll have to see how that pans out with the time I have available.”
What would it mean to you if you could end your top-level career as British GT Champion?
AH: “Wouldn’t that be something? I think if Ross [Gunn] and I could do it this year, that would be the best achievement of my career. British GT is the number one national Pro-Am championship in the world and if you win it, it’s the biggest thing for a bronze driver from the UK. I’ve been fortunate to win it twice and it’s felt massively cool each time. A third time would be even better.”
