Result: FP2
Martin Rump and KCMG by Champion Racing, as well as Taiwan Top Speed Racing, continued their impressive starts to this weekend’s Blancpain GT Series Asia round at Suzuka by once again topping this evening’s practice times.
The sun might have been setting over the Japanese GP venue but Rump was still suitably awake to knock 1.4s from his FP1 benchmark. An early red flag period delayed proceedings, but - once the action resumed - it wasn’t long before Rump had replaced Craft-Bamboo Racing debutant Nick Foster at the top of the times.
Indeed, the Estonian’s 2m02.248s went untroubled for the rest of the session, which featured a second brief stoppage when co-driver Rick Yoon beached the pair’s Audi R8 LMS GT3 in the gravel.
Foster’s quick early time also remained good enough for second fastest, albeit 0.461s down on Rump’s best. The Silver Cup-entered Craft-Bamboo Racing Porsche he shares with Devon Modell made a big step forward compared with its morning pace to end up almost two tenths clear of Franky Cheng Congfu’s Milestone Racing Audi and the championship-leading GruppeM Mercedes-AMG shared by Hunter Abbott and Maxi Goetz.
Marchy Lee and Shaun Thong’s Audi Hong Kong R8 LMS GT3 was fifth for the second session running after edging out Mitch Gilbert and Aditya Patel’s OD Racing Audi by just 0.012s. Spirit of Race’s Massimiliano Wiser was the top Ferrari driver in seventh ahead of GruppeM’s second Mercedes-AMG driven by Jules Szymkowiak and Tim Sugden, while Jeffery Lee and Alessio Picariello dropped to ninth in FP2 after finishing second this morning.
The ARN Racing Ferrari was once again fastest of the race-by-race Japanese entries in 14th, while Greg Teo Bee Tat and David Tjiptobiantoro’s T2 Motorsports’ Ferrari posted the quickest Am Cup time ahead of class rivals Lin Yue and Zhu Junhan (FFF Racing Team by ACM).
Elsewhere, Taiwan Top Speed Racing’s George Chou and Keo Chang continued their battle with Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Jean-Marc Merlin and Frank Yu at the head of the GT4 times. Once again it was the #17 Porsche that paced the class thanks to its 2m19.115s, a lap marginally slower than its FP1 benchmark but still 0.7s quicker than Yu could manage despite improving on his final run.
Byron Tong and Eric Lo’s EKS Motorsports’ Porsche was 0.058s slower in third.
Tomorrow’s final practice session takes place at 08:00 local time ahead of qualifying at 10:05 and the weekend’s opening hour-long race at 15:10.
Watch qualifying and both races live on the championship’s Facebook page and website.
