What was meant to be a late spring round has become the final stop of the 2026 GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS season. For the first time since 2024, two races at Shanghai International Circuit in China will decide the championship, with 19 cars entering the final two races of the year taking place Saturday 31 October and Sunday 1 November.
This comes off the heels of a second running of the Beijing Street Race, where Harmony Racing and Absolute Racing split the honours of overall victory.
But despite spinning and crashing out of Race 1 in Beijing, a second-place finish in Race 2 has kept Origine Motorsport’s Lu Wei on top of the Drivers’ championship heading back to Shanghai. Ray Li’s team is bearing down on its third consecutive GT World Asia Overall title, and to help their cause, Porsche works superstar Laurin Heinrich will be back alongside Lu in the #11 Porsche 911 GT3 R.
Absolute Racing’s Huang Ruohan and Alessandro Ghiretti trail by just five points in their #911 Porsche, while three other teams are on the fringes, needing to stave off elimination in Race 1. The Silver class-leading #16 FAW Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom R8 of Franky Cheng Congfu and James Yu Kuai (-26) leads the chasing pack, ahead of Phantom Global Racing’s Anthony Liu Xu (-28) and Harmony Racing’s Liu Kaishun (-29).
Liu Xu, who won Race 1 of GT World Asia’s last trip to Shanghai in 2026, will be joined by 2025 Porsche Cup winner Loek Hartog in the #37 Phantom Global Porsche – while Liu Kaishun, who won Race 1 in Beijing alongside Takuro Shinohara last time, is set to be reunited with Chen Weian in the #96 Harmony Racing Ferrari 296 GT3.
GTO with KRC’s #10 BMW M4 GT3 EVO (Brian Lee/Maxime Oosten) leads in the Silver-Am Cup standings by 10 points over Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Liang Jiatong, who’ll share the #77 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO this weekend with Malaysian driver Melvin Moh, back with the team for the first time since 2019.
Oosten, meanwhile, trails Yu Kuai by 14 points in the race for the SRO GT Academy trophy, which comes with the coveted prize of a fully-funded ride in next year’s CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa.
And there’s only 12 points separating the top two teams in the Am Cup standings – the #8 Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG (Setiawan Santoso/Zhou Bihuang) and the pursuing #22 Origine Porsche (Liu Hangcheng/Wang Zhongwei).
In a relatively small entry list, Shanghai does feature some new additions to the field: Among them are the series debut for new BMW M factory driver Tim Tramnitz, the 21-year-old who shares the #89 Team KRC BMW with Ruan Cunfan this weekend.
There is also a new driver pairing in the #918 Absolute Racing Porsche – this time out, it’s Kevin Tse, the British GT standout, sharing the cockpit with Porsche factory GT driver Alessio Picariello.
Both races plus qualifying will air live on the SRO GT World YouTube channel.
Images © SRO Motorsports Group
