Shanghai International Circuit has become one of the principal sites for the Regional Government’s COVID-19 isolation wards as the Chinese target a COVID-Zero future.
The picture above shows a huge tented area covering the whole of SIC’s car park, for reference, and for scale, this is the circular area surrounding the facility’s metro station taken from the top of the grandstand, seen in the top left of the picture above.
This facility is understood to form just 10% of the current 150,000 isolation beds currently in place in and around the city.
GMB AMG Looks To Make A Debut After Two Year Delay!
Japanese squad Team GMB will finally make its Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS debut this season.
The Mercedes-AMG GT4 entrant first announced plans to join the championship at the end of 2019 but was unable to compete due to the postponement of the last two seasons. The outfit was originally established in 1991 but hasn’t raced since its final All Japan GT Championship (now known as Super GT) campaign in 2003.
Team owner and driver Hiroaki Hatano began his career in Super Taikyu but became a mainstay of the All Japan GT Championship from 1996 until 2003 before joining the VITA Trophy Endurance Series in 2016.
His 41-year-old Silver-Am partner Shinya Hosokawa has also raced in Super GT where he finished runner-up in 2006 and third in ’07.
Further team announcements are promised in the coming weeks ahead of GTWC Asia’s opening round at Sepang on May 20-22.
Sgotto Joins B-Quik Absolute Racing
Nicola Sgotto will join B-Quik Absolute Racing this year as Team Manager with responsibility for operations across all GT3 and GT4 programmes.
Sgotto joins from Absolute Racing, where he has held multiple responsibilities across Asia over two stints during the last eight years as well as a spell in Europe with Iron Lynx GT sandwiched in between.
After a career as a race engineer in various single seater formula, Nicola joined Absolute Racing in 2016 as a race engineer with its Porsche GT and Porsche Carrera Cup operations before becoming Technical Director for the team’s GT World Challenge Asia and Intercontinental GT Challenge campaigns in 2019 and 2020.
Nicola Sgotto: “I was a Team Manager and Technical Director for Absolute Racing from 2016 to 2020, and I’ve been thrilled to rejoin the team after a brief hiatus and now I’m delighted to be appointed Team Manager of B-Quik Absolute Racing. The team’s programs have always been ambitious, and we can see that their plans this season for Thailand Super Series are no exception, I’m really looking forward to this new challenge.”
Henk Kiks, Managing Director, B-Quik Racing: “We’re very pleased to secure Nicola into the position of B-Quik Absolute Racing Team Manager, he will be responsible for managing all our GT3 and GT4 operations this year. He’s someone we really wanted to fill the position as the team comes out of the Covid era and targets another big step forward this year, including an expanded GT3 car roster, running a brace of GT4 cars for the first time and as we now look towards races outside Thailand as international travel restrictions ease up, so we’re very pleased it’s come together. With his all-round experience and of course his long-time positions with Absolute Racing, we’re confident that Nicola will bring all the experience we require to make a significant step forward this year. We’re all excited that he’s already bedded in as we prepare for the opening round of the season in Bangsaen in just over two months’ time.”
