> Second win of the season moves Yu and Cheng back into title fight
> KRC BMWs bag double class victory; Climax wins Am
> Okayama Race 1 Result
Yu Kuai and Cheng Congfu claimed their second overall GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS wins of the season in Okayama’s opening race after Absolute Racing’s wet tyre gamble backfired in the changing conditions.
5ZIGEN’s Nissan shared by Takayuki Aoki and Atsushi Miyake chased the Audi home, while Neil Verhagen’s overtaking prowess elevated KRC’s BMW and Ruan Cun Fan to the final podium place and Pro-Am victory.
Silver-Am spoils went the way of Brian Lee and Maxime Oosten in the same team’s other M4, which initially finished just ahead of Laurin Heinrich and his charging Origine Porsche before a post-race penalty cost the BMW two places.
That, allied to Huang Ruohan and Alessandro Ghiretti finishing eighth, resulted in the overall championship lead changing hands for the first time this season, with Lu Wei moving four points clear of Absolute’s duo after starting the day four behind. Cheng and Yu are five points further back in third.
Elsewhere, Climax Racing’s Setiawan Santoso and Zhou Bi Huang prevailed in the tight scrap for Am class honours.
But it might have been very different at the front without a series of events that conspired against pole winner Sandy Stuvik and his Absolute co-driver Akash Nandy. The Lamborghini enjoyed a comfortable six-second lead over Cheng’s Audi when the rain that began falling at one-quarter distance sent the slick-shod Haziq Zairel Oh and Song Jiajun sliding into Turn 1’s tyre wall and gravel trap, respectively.
The Full Course Yellow that followed coincided with the pit window opening. And with the rain briefly intensifying, Stuvik instructed his team to switch to wets for Nandy’s stint at the first opportunity. It would prove the wrong call amid rapidly evolving conditions that all other teams bar one adjudged suitable for slicks.
Absolute pitted Nandy again before the subsequent Safety Car period concluded, dropping its Huracan to the tail of the top 10.
Yu, meanwhile, jumped Nandy in the first round of stops and was therefore already out front when the Malaysian pitted again for slicks. That promoted Miyake – now aboard 5ZIGEN’s Nissan that Aoki had driven to fourth in the first half – to a close second from Liu Kaishun’s Harmony Ferrari, Elias Seppänen’s Mercedes-AMG and Verhagen’s BMW.
Racing resumed with 20 minutes remaining. And while the top two broke clear, attention was focused on the multi-car battles up and down the top 10.
Verhagen and Heinrich were, unsurprisingly considering their factory status, the biggest movers. KRC’s BMW took the restart in fifth but ultimately completed the podium by passing Seppänen and then Liu, while an early move on Ghiretti proved essential to Heinrich progressing to fifth and helping his co-driver Lu take the championship lead in the process.
GTO with KRC’s BMW benefitted from Seppänen’s drive-through penalty for an FCY infringement but was ultimately docked two places for contact caused in the act of passing Liu’s Harmony Ferrari. The same move opened the door for Origine’s Porsche to also take fifth from Liu who initially completed the top six along with co-driver Chen Weian before gaining a spot back post-race.
But all of this was of no significance to Yu who crossed the line two seconds clear of Miyake after the Nissan failed to make inroads after the restart.
Further back, Plus with BMW M Team Studie’s Seiji Ara and Tomohide Yamaguchi collected their best result since 2023 in seventh, while Huang and Ghiretti completed the top eight.
The remaining overall points paying positions were filled by the two cars that swapped back to slicks after initially taking wets. Andres Pato and Jaxon Evans – whose Phantom Audi starts on pole tomorrow – beat Stuvik and Nandy to ninth.
But even the changing conditions could not help Anthony Liu whose title ambitions suffered a literal blow when a lap one puncture necessitated an unscheduled stop. That as well as 10 seconds of success time limited the Porsche he shares with Ayhancan Güven to 12th.
Race 2 gets underway at 10:00 JST (GMT +9) on Sunday. Watch it live on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel and official app.
