A wet track and foggy skies couldn’t drown out the prospect of an eventful GT World Challenge Asia Race 2 at Fuji Speedway, in which defending series champion Anthony Liu Xu took a dramatic reversal victory alongside co-driver Alessio Picariello.
The #1 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R of Liu and Picariello took the lead with less than five minutes to go in the one-hour sprint and drove on to their first win of the season.
Liu had to drive past his old team – Craft-Bamboo Racing – and his de-facto replacement, Cao Qi in the #30 Mercedes-AMG GT3 – to grab the top spot with a well-executed pass up the inside of GR Supra Corner (turn 14). A late Full Course Yellow for debris at Dunlop Corner practically cemented the victory.
Liu and Picariello also took the overall championship lead for the first time this year, by two points. Race 1 winners Bo Yuan and Leo Ye Hongli were taken out in an accident involving at least four cars shortly after the race went green for the first time.
The #87 Origine Motorsports Porsche was taken out along with the #93 AAS Phantom Global Porsche and #777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3, while the #89 Team KRC BMW M4 GT3 retired from damage during the ensuing Safety Car intervention.
Qi and Maro Engel finished second in their pink #30 Craft-Bamboo Mercedes – Qi had initially driven to the lead with fifteen minutes left, past the #22 Climax Racing Mercedes of Wang Zhongwei following the race’s second Safety Car, this one for the stranded #41 Team Absolute Audi R8 LMS GT3 of James Yu Kuai.
Bouncing back from yesterday’s retirement, the Silver class #36 FAW Audi (Franky Cheng Congfu/Adderly Fong) drove from 11th to third in the closing minutes to finish on the podium.
The same went for the #888 Triple Eight JMR Mercedes (Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim/Luca Stolz), which lost the lead on lap one but was still able to finish fourth and consolidate good points.
After being black-flagged for causing a collision in Race 1, the #77 Harmony Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 (Liang Jiatong/Luo Kailuo) finished fifth, ahead of the #22 Climax Racing Mercedes of Wang and Jules Gounon, which slumped to sixth after Gounon led the entirety of the opening stint.
In seventh was the #4 Origine Porsche (Lu Wei/Patrick Pilet) which dropped out of the top five after getting hit by the #13 Phantom Global Porsche (Sun Jingzu/Jaxon Evans) – Sun finished fourth on the road, but was given a ten-second time penalty for hitting Lu.
That dropped the #13 to tenth, behind the #63 VSR Lamborghini Huracán GT3 EVO2 (Zhou Bihuang/Marco Mapelli) and the #6 VSR Lamborghini (Bian Hao/Edoardo Liberati).
Silver-Am class victory went to the #500 Team 5Zigen Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 (Hiromasa “Hirobon” Kitano/Yu Kanamaru), which finished 11th overall. One place behind was the Am class-winning #51 AMAC Motorsport Porsche (Andrew Macpherson/William Ben Porter).
GT World Challenge Asia moves west to Suzuka Circuit in two weeks on 6/7 July, beginning the second half of the season.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group Asia
