> Five points separate championship rivals ahead of Shanghai showdown
> Origine’s Lu and Hartog inherit second from penalised Audi
> Yu and Cheng clinch China Cup title despite dropping to third
> Am winners AMAC finish an excellent eighth
> Race 2 Result
Huang Ruohan and Alessandro Ghiretti are heading to Shanghai’s GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS title showdown just five points behind championship leader Lu Wei after winning Race 2 at the Beijing Street Circuit.
Huang made the decisive pass for the lead after the pitstops before taking the chequered flag 2.3s ahead of FAW Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom’s R8 shared by newly crowned China Cup champions and fellow overall title contenders Cheng Congfu and Yu Kuai. Points leader Lu Wei and his Origine co-driver Loek Hartog initially completed the podium before swapping places with the Audi following the latter’s post-race penalty.
The result capped a rollercoaster weekend for Absolute’s #911 crew who arrived in China’s capital 22 points behind Lu. A fire in Friday evening’s Bronze Test left the team with no choice but to spend a sleepless night building up a brand-new Porsche that Ghiretti then used to bag pole position for Sunday’s race.
Am winners Andrew Macpherson and Ben Porter finished an excellent eighth overall, while the Silver-Am spoils again went to GTO with KRC’s Brian Lee and Maxime Oosten.
HUANG AND GHIRETTI REWARD ABSOLUTE’S WORK
The frenetic first stint began with Brendon Leitch leading by halfway around the opening lap after Harmony’s Ferrari jumped both Hartog and Ghiretti. But two corners later, and with drivers still squabbling over positions, Jesse Krohn and Atsushi Miyake made contact entering Turn 8, spinning 5ZIGEN’s Nissan into the outside tyre wall. The damage and location immediately called for a Safety Car.
Ghiretti dropped to third in the initial shake up but re-passed Hartog at the restart with a sweeping move around the outside of Turn 3. Jaxon Evans, meanwhile, relieved Krohn’s KRC BMW of fourth before the pitstops began soon after.
The window coincided with Aaron Lim crashing heavily at Turn 1 before attempting to return his damaged Porsche to the pits. Ultimately, the Malaysian was forced to park up, which required a second Safety Car period once the pitstops concluded.
Leitch’s co-driver Song Jiajun emerged from the swap with his advantage intact but immediately lost first place to Huang at Turn 1 when the race went green. Lu followed him through soon after but the championship leader had no answer for the pace of Absolute’s Porsche, which pulled sufficiently clear to remain out of reach.
The same could not be said for the Am drivers running second to sixth who were passed in quick succession by Cheng’s Audi, which – it later emerged – had padded out its pitstop. The potential track position advantage gained from doing so incurred a five-second post-race penalty that dropped the car from second to third overall.
Nevertheless, Yu and Cheng will head to Shanghai still in overall title contention as well as the Silver class championship leaders.
Andres Pato and Jaxon Evans were on course to finish fourth before Anthony Liu’s Turn 3 lunge sent the Audi spinning into the tyre barrier. It also earned the Phantom Porsche a 30-second post-race penalty that demoted the 911 also driven by Ayhancan Güven to 15th.
Instead, two Silver entries with significant additional pitstop time battled back from lowly positions to complete the top five. Saturday’s winners Liu Kaishun and Takuro Shinohara (Harmony Racing) finished ahead of Akash Nandy and Sandy Stuvik (Absolute Racing) who were third on Saturday.
Li Kerong and Joel Sturm completed the Pro-Am podium and overall top six in Absolute’s Porsche ahead of Krohn and Ruan Cunfan’s BMW, and the Am class-winning AMAC Porsche that Porter incredibly powered from 15th to eighth over the final quarter-of-an-hour.
2026 concludes with two one-hour races at Shanghai International Circuit on November 1-2.
