Origine Motorsports got its third win of the 2024 GT World Challenge Asia season – but this time, it was the mint green #87 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli that took the win in Saturday’s 60-minute sprint race.
Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim won the pole position earlier this morning – but the royal racer wouldn’t even make it past the first formation lap of the race. The left front brake of the #888 Triple Eight JMR Mercedes-AMG GT3 caught fire and forced Ibrahim into the pits just as the rest of the field was getting ready to start.
Ibrahim and Luca Stolz would not take the green flag – and Franky Cheng Congfu would lead the remaining field of 32 to the green in his #36 FAW Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II, with Yuan hanging in closely in the #87 Porsche.
The leading two broke away from the rest of the field as the #911 Absolute Racing Porsche of Eshan Pieris fought hard to hold onto third position, from the #4 Origine Porsche of Lu Wei and #6 VSR Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 of Bian Hao. Hao was able to get past Lu, but Pieris would keep Hao at bay until the pit window opened after 25 minutes.
Yuan pitted the #87 Porsche at the first opportunity while Cheng stayed out and led two more laps before pitting the #36 Audi. Ye’s pace coming out of the pits in the Porsche was strong, and as Adderly Fong exited the pits in the #36 Audi, Ye took no time to pass Fong for the lead.
A brief full course yellow for debris helped Ye stretch his lead to over nine seconds over Fong with the rest of the field over 15 seconds behind.
Disaster struck the #36 FAW Audi with 20 minutes left after Adderly Fong slowed to a crawl along the front stretch, conceding second place in the process. Fong pulled off at 100R and retired, and second place was now a fiercely fought contest between two of the VSR Lamborghinis – the #6 now driven by Edoardo Liberati and the #63 of Marco Mapelli.
Ye, who briefly raced in All-Japan F3 some eight years ago, managed the rest of his stint perfectly – and took a comfortable victory by almost nine seconds.
And after the sister #4 Origine Porsche received a late drive-through penalty for track limits infringements, that dropped Lu and Patrick Pilet out of the overall top ten – and out of the points. That setback for the #4 and the win for the #87 gives Yuan and Ye the lead in the Overall Drivers’ Championship after five rounds.
The two VSR Lamborghinis, the #6 of Hao/Liberati and the #63 of Mapelli and Zhou Bihuang, completed the podium in second and third place. Unfortunately, not all three made the chequered flag – the #563 ANR/VSR Lamborghini (Akira Mizutani/Yuki Nemoto) retired with a mechanical issue.
They were followed to the flag by a quartet of Porsches led by the #93 AAS Phantom Global Porsche (Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak/Joel Eriksson), just ahead of the #1 Absolute Racing Porsche (Anthony Liu Xu/Alessio Picariello) – Picariello made a late charge to power through to fifth.
In sixth was the #911 Absolute Racing Porsche of Pieris and Tanart Sathienthirakul, followed by the best of the all-Japanese entries, the #25 Porsche Center Okazaki car (Kiyoshi Uchiyama/Tsubasa Kondo) in seventh.
Picariello had a frenetic scrap for position during his stint versus the #30 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes of Maro Engel and the #40 Absolute Team Audi of Markus Winkelhock. Engel and Cao Qi finished eighth ahead of Winkelhock and Huang Ruo Han in ninth.
The #777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 (Satoshi Hoshino/Tomonobu Fujii) completed the top ten.
Am class honours went to the #75 Garage 75 Ferrari 296 GT3 (David Tjiptobiantoro/Christian Colombo) which finished 18th overall.
Race 2 starts tomorrow at 11:00 AM JST (local time), where the #888 Triple Eight JMR Mercedes of Luca Stolz and Abu Bakar Ibrahim will get a second chance.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group Asia
