Aston Martin took to its social media channels to tease what seems to be a hotter version of the Vantage. The picture does not say much, and the caption only included a short mention of the car’s debut date: “Arriving 22.03.21”. So, what could this be?

The hottest Aston Martin Vantage to this date is the AMR, but it was only produced in a limited batch of just 200 units and there is a high chance that all of them have been accounted for by now. Which leaves us at the mercy of to pure speculation.

It could be that AM used the safety car to silently preview a body kit that it planned to install on a road-going version of the Vantage, and the Formula 1 connection might be here to suggest that this hotter Vantage could be geared more towards track driving.

Another argument in supporting this theory comes from the safety car’s front splitter, a redesigned component capable of generating 155 kilos (342 pounds) of downforce at 200 kph (124 mph), more than twice as much when compared to the standard Vantage.

A new AMR version is out of the question, since it might kill the whole exclusiveness of the original batch. Motor1 believes that this mysterious Vantage variant could get as much as 528 horsepower, which is 25 horsepower more than the AMR (503 horsepower, 461 pound-feet of torque coming from a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V-8 sourced from AMG).

If this is indeed a Vantage tweaked with circuit performance in mind, we expect a set of complementing tune ups, including a revised suspension and gearbox, as well as a stiffer chassis and perhaps even a race-style interior. Weight could also go down a bit, but that is something we are going to find out on March 22.