Aston Martin Racing will return to Le Mans in 2008 to defend its GT1 title in the distinctive blue and orange livery of Gulf Oil.

Two Aston Martin DBR9s will look to emulate Gulf’s first victory at the 24 hour race 40 years on.

Alain Dujean, Gulf Oil vice president international, said: “This is arguably the most important year ever for Gulf in motorsport. The famous Gulf racing colours first tasted victory at Le Mans in 1968, so 2008 already had great significance for us, but for Gulf to have joined up with Aston Martin Racing for this year is fantastic – the coming together of two great automotive names, for what I hope will be a long and fruitful partnership.”

David Richards, chairman of Aston Martin, said: “Endurance racing is engrained in the heritage of both Gulf and Aston Martin and we have also both been intrinsically linked through Le Mans for many decades. It was perhaps destined that, in the year we defend our GT1 title and Gulf celebrates the 40th anniversary of its win, we would finally race together at La Sarthe.”

The two Aston Martin DBR9s for 2008 will be entered as numbers 007 and 009.

There's always someone in Gulf colors...

Yeah but this is a more important partnership.

Doesnt look quite as badass as the Ford GT40 in Gulf colors.

I would rather see the P2 RS Spyders in Gulf livery...but the DBR9 looks bad assed in blue and orange.

In my opinion the Gulf colors were never beautiful, but the heritage made them bad ass.

That is fucking sexy. Yes it is. Hi-res anyone?

I wish the ACO would stop being so gay and let Porsche bring their P2 car to Le Mans and the MC12 should be allowed in too!

It's not the ACO's fault that Porsche wasn't in P2 at Le Mans, it was Porsche's decision. They'll be there this year almost certainly.

I heard that the ACO banned Porsche because they didn't want a P2 car beating a P1 car at Le Mans, which was a possibility given the results in the ALMS races beforehand.

I saw the DBR9 in Gulf colours in the carbon yesterday and I have to say it does look a bit odd. I think it'll look better when on track (hopefully winning).

Wasn't Porsche's decision to not compete in the the 2007 LeMans in protest to the ACO's rules, which Porsche felt would have made it impossible for its RS Spyder to be competitive against the P1 cars...and the talk from the ACO about consequences if a P2 car challenged a P1 car for the overall win? If I'm not mistaken, I think the ACO has decided to change the P1 formula to make it a race for closed cockpit cars which are more aerodynamic, and in theory will be easily able to out-class the open P2 cars.

Frankly I'm getting kinda sick of rule makers trying to influence results through legislation. I thought it was awesome when a GT3 RSR won Daytona a couple of years ago (I think it was Daytona...although it could have been Seabring), and showed up those ugly ugly prototypes.

The RS Spyder is not a P1-competing car under ACO rules because the ALMS allows P2 cars to have 530 HP instead of the ACO's 480.

I think Bjorn is more right...

OK so it was a chinese whispers effect from wherever I read about the ACO banning Porsche. Yes the ACO have decided to make P1 closed cockpit.

Aston Martin are providing their V12 engine for a Lola chassis apparently for this years Le Mans - details aren't firm at the moment, so I don't know who's running the team etc.

There are also rumoured to be 6 customers wanting V8 Vantage GT2's for LMS/24 Hours Le Mans, so we could see Aston Martin in 3 classes this year.

With P1 being dominated by diesels for the last 2 years I wonder what chance a petrol powered Aston V12 would have against the R10s and 908s. Although I did hear that the ACO was reducing the fuel capacity for diesels...

Yes they are dominated by diesels and I think you're right about the fuel regs for diesels, but at the end of the day it's about endurance and as we saw last year anything can happen even to Audi and Peugeot, so you can't really count anyone out I guess even with diesels being quicker.