Result: FP3
ARN Racing’s Kota Sasaki set the fastest time of Blancpain GT Series Asia’s Suzuka weekend in final practice this morning, while Taiwan Top Speed Racing continued to dominate the GT4 class.
The 20-minute session, held early in the morning on a dry track, offered teams only a short opportunity to fine-tune their set-ups ahead of qualifying and this afternoon’s race. But Sasaki rose to the challenge by recording a best of 2m01.826s, which was 0.4s faster than Martin Rump had lapped in FP2 yesterday.
The Ferrari 488 GT3, usually found racing in its domestic Super Taikyu championship but which has also entered both Japanese Blancpain GT Series Asia events, ended up 0.113s faster than Alex Yoong’s Audi R8 LMS Cup entry and a further half-second quicker than the sister Phoenix Racing-run Audi Hong Kong R8 driven by Marchy Lee and Shaun Thong, which once again topped the Silver Cup pile.
Nicolas Costa and Sandy Stuvik’s VSR Lamborghini was a second shy of Sasaki’s pace but still finished fourth ahead of another race-by-race Super Taikyu entry - the CarGuy Racing Huracan GT3 driven by Kei Cozzolino - and first of Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Porsches.
Rui Aguas’ Spirit of Race Ferrari and Seiji Ara’s D’station Racing Porsche were next up, the latter ensuring that all three race-by-race Japanese entries finished inside the top-eight.
Naoto Takeda and Takuya Shirasaka bounced back from a tough second practice session to post the fastest Am Cup time. KCMG’s Japanese duo continued their scrap with X-One Motorsports’ Andrew Haryanto and Samson Chan, whose Lamborghini finished 0.3s shy of the Audi’s best time.
Elsewhere, Taiwan Top Speed Racing maintained its perfect free practice record at Suzuka by once again pacing the GT4 class. George Chou saved his best until the very end when a 2m18.969s lap helped him beat Craft-Bamboo Racing duo Jean-Marc Merlin and Frank Yu by almost one second. HubAuto Racing’s Ringo Chong and Masahiko Ida completed the top-three in their Porsche.
Qualifying for both of this weekend’s races gets underway at 10:05 local time this morning. Watch it live on the Blancpain GT Series Asia Facebook page.