Race 1
Franky Cheng and Adderly Fong have converted pole position into Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS victory at Sepang despite the best efforts of Bian Ye whose inspired opening stint helped VSR and Edoardo Liberati finish second overall.
Third went to Origine Motorsport’s Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli who also weathered the real and metaphorical storm on their slick tyres.
The top-three crews comprised as many different classes – Silver, Pro-Am and the new Silver-Am category – while Am honours went the way of Garage 75’s David Tjiptobiantoro and Christian Colombo.
The heavy rain that delayed this weekend’s first hour-long race by 60 minutes also presented each team with a tyre choice conundrum prior to the start. Prevailing logic suggested slicks would be the correct decision despite the track remaining visibly slippery. But 11 of the 32 cars opted for wets, and it was these that powered their way towards the front early on.
Bian Ye was the highest placed wet-shod starter in 12th, but such was his advantage that the Chinese driver’s Lamborghini passed Cheng before the end of lap two and pulled away over the following 10 minutes.
Satoshi Hoshino and Cao Qi completed the top-three soon after despite lining up 17th and 13th, respectively. But both were passed by a resurgent Cheng just as the pit window opened, which coincided with track conditions swinging back towards those on slicks.
Craft-Bamboo swapped Qi for Daniel Morad at the first opportunity, while VSR and Phantom Global Racing – which runs the FAW-bannered Audi – opted to continue for several more laps during which Cheng trimmed Ye’s advantage from 18 seconds to seven.
However, it was the Mercedes-AMG in third that benefitted most. Morad’s Pirellis were fully up to temperature when Liberati emerged ahead, but he struggled for traction, eventually slipped wide and lost the lead halfway around his out-lap.
Fong, who swapped with Cheng next time around, then rejoined between the Mercedes-AMG and Lamborghini. The trio circulated as one for a while until Morad became boxed in by traffic and the Audi managed to nose ahead, albeit via a little contact. The resulting damage proved superficial to the R8 but punctured the Mercedes-AMG’s tyre.
Liberati duly inherited second but he was unable to apply any pressure to Fong who reeled off the final 15 minutes without further drama.
Behind, Yuan kept Origine’s Porsche in podium contention despite running slicks at the start before his co-driver Ye made the most of Craft-Bamboo’s issues to seal third overall. In doing so, they became Fanatec GT Asia’s inaugural Silver-Am class race winners.
Alessio Picariello held off fellow Porsche driver Bastian Buus throughout the opening stint to bring Absolute’s 911 home ahead of AAS/Phantom’s example in fourth and fifth overall. The pair circulated and overtook others as one post-pitstops after their respective co-drivers Anthony Liu and Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak picked slicks and wets prior to the start.
However, those positions swapped post-race when Picariello was penalised five seconds for a robust move on Tomonobu Fujii that dropped D’station’s Aston Martin two places from fourth. Earlier, Hoshino’s decision to start on wets had moved the new Vantage from mid-grid into podium contention. Sixth was still, therefore, a positive result.
Origine’s other Porsche, which starts Sunday’s race from pole, finished seventh in the hands of Lu Wei and Laurin Heinrich, Jeffrey Lee and Fabian Schiller were eighth in Craft-Bamboo’s Mercedes-AMG, the first of Absolute’s Audis – shared by James Yu and Akash Nandy – was ninth, and home favourite Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim rounded out the overall points paying positions in 10th with Jordan Love.
Qi and Morad, meanwhile, had to settle for 11th.
Race 2
Lu Wei and Laurin Heinrich clinched a commanding victory from pole position in Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered by AWS’s second 60-minute race at Sepang.
The Origine Motorsport Porsche was never troubled after Heinrich pulled nine seconds clear of Daniel Morad in the opening stint before Lu took the chequered flag 14 seconds ahead of the same Mercedes-AMG also driven by Cao Qi. The result was a tonic of sorts for Craft-Bamboo’s #30 crew, whose Race 1 podium chances were ended by a puncture.
Absolute Racing’s post-race penalty for final lap contact with Climax’s #22 Mercedes-AMG promoted Harmony’s Silver class-winning Ferrari shared by Luo Kailuo and Liang Jiatong to third overall.
Silver-Am was won for the second time this weekend by Origine’s other 911 despite Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli serving a five-second success penalty for their Race 1 overall podium. Further back, The Spirit of FFF Racing’s Mineki Okura and Hiroshi Hamaguchi clinched Am victory in their Audi by passing AMAC’s Porsche on the final lap.
Victory by 14 seconds was no less than Origine’s #4 Porsche deserved after Heinrich converted his Q2 pace – the German qualified 0.5s faster than anyone else – into a commanding lead by the end of the opening stint.
Markus Winkelhock’s spinning Audi helped the likes of Alessio Picariello, Joel Eriksson and Tsubasa Kondo make significant gains at turn one on the opening lap. But none of that concerned Heinrich who powered clear after initially holding off Morad, Ralf Aron, Fabian Schiller and the fast-starting Jordan Love.
Picariello and Eriksson both passed Love before the leading Pros all pitted towards the end of the 10-minute window. A short Full Course Yellow period triggered by Elegant Racing’s crashed Mercedes-AMG coincided with some of those stops, but the order and gaps were largely unaffected.
As such, Lu emerged with his healthy lead over Cao intact. And although it reduced initially, Origine’s Porsche eventually pulled clear of the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG which completed a relatively lonely race in second.
Behind, Wang Zhongwei was also on course for a podium until Anthony Liu – who’d earlier passed Jeffrey Lee – tapped the Climax Mercedes-AMG into a spin at the final corner on the last lap. Liu continued to take third on the road but was penalised 33 seconds in lieu of a drive-through penalty before the podium ceremony took place.
That elevated Harmony’s Ferrari to the overall rostrum after the leading Silver-graded driver, Liang, passed several amateurs in the second stint. He was helped by the fierce battle for fourth that initially featured Lee and Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim but eventually included Sun JingZu (Phantom Global Racing), Zhou Bihuang (VSR) and Min Heng (Climax Racing) who squabbled between themselves.
But the order became clearer once VSR’s Lamborghini completed a stop-go for a short pitstop and Climax’s Mercedes-AMG was black flagged for failing to serve a similar penalty. Those plus Liu’s extra time post-race elevated Ibrahim and Love’s Triple Eight JMR entry to fourth overall and third in Pro-Am, while Wang and Aron – who were one corner away from an overall podium – salvaged fifth.
There was a second Silver-Am win for Yuan and Ye whose Porsche was part of the racing incident that spun Winkelhock around at the start. Ye dropped four places to eighth as a result but remained in contention to give Yuan a chance in the second stint. However, their cause was also undoubtedly helped by the black flag that accounted for erstwhile class leaders Min and Jaylyn Robotham.
Audi Sport Asia Team Absolute’s James Yu and Akash Nandy were less than a second behind their class rivals in seventh, while Saturday’s winners Franky Cheng and Adderly Fong completed the top eight despite serving the maximum 15-second success penalty.
Lee and Schiller (Craft-Bamboo), and Hiroaki Nagai and Yuta Kamimura (Porsche Center Okazaki) rounded out the overall points scoring positions.
Further back, Liu and Picariello’s penalty dropped Absolute’s Porsche from third to 12th.
Next up it’s Chang International Circuit in Thailand, which hosts rounds three and four on May 10-12.
