> LM Corsa’s best-ever result completes Ferrari 1-2; Origine battle to third
> Class wins for Wakisaka/Ogawa, Lee/Oosten and Wang/Liu
> Fuji Race 1 result
Harmony Racing celebrated its first GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS victory of the season at Fuji where Liu Kaishun and the returning David Chen Weian held off LM Corsa’s Ferrari in the first of this weekend’s two 60-minute races.
The pole-winning Silver class Ferrari slipped to third on the opening lap behind the team’s sister car driven by Adderly Fong and FAW Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom’s R8 before additional pitstop time dropped both down the order.
Shigekazu Wakisaka and Ryo Ogawa were the chief beneficiaries in LM Corsa’s Ferrari, which collected the team’s best-ever GT World Asia result on its return to the championship, as well as Pro-Am spoils.
The final podium place changed hands on the final lap when Laurin Heinrich got the better of Yu Kuai. Origine’s Porsche, driven by Lu Wei in the opening stint, emerged from its driver change in sixth before engaging in a particularly eye-catching battle with the 5ZIGEN Nissan that clawed its way from 23rd on the grid to fifth by the finish.
Silver-Am victory went the way of GTO with KRC’s BMW shared by Brian Lee and Max Oosten, while Origine’s Liu Hangcheng and Wang Zhongwei extended their Am championship lead with a third win in five races.
HARMONY’S NEW PARTNERSHIP BLOSSOMS FIRST TIME OUT
A particularly pretty new livery influenced by Japan’s Sakura flower turned heads in testing, but it was Chen’s qualifying pace on his first appearance in more than a year that really marked out Harmony’s #96 Ferrari as a potential victory contender.
Its lead was initially short-lived thanks to both Cheng Congfu’s jump start from the front row and Harmony’s other 296 that legally swept into the lead before the end of lap one.
Fong remained there throughout the opening stint, albeit with Cheng and Chen right behind, while the likes of Akash Nandy and fast-starting Wakisaka – up three places from eighth – dropped back towards the marauding Takayuki Aoki whose Nissan charged from 23rd to sixth before the driver changes.
That’s also where the balance tipped back towards Chen and newly installed Liu who benefitted from Fong’s additional solo driver pitstop time and five-second penalty applied to the Audi for its jump start. Both also dropped behind Wakisaka’s co-driver Ogawa, while Fong’s 10 extra seconds helped 5ZIGEN’s Nissan and then Origine’s Porsche demote the erstwhile leader to sixth.
The top two circulated a second or two apart for the remainder of the race before taking the chequered flag separated by nine tenths.
Instead, attention switched to Heinrich’s manoeuvres. Fong’s Ferrari was first to fall before the German quickly caught Atsushi Miyake’s Nissan, which proved typically fast along Fuji’s long start/finish straight. The GT-R prevailed in its first side-by-side battle with the 911 before Heinrich made a similar move stick next time around.
Having dispatched the Nissan, his sights were soon set on Yu whose defence lasted until the end of the final lap.
KRC’s Ruan Cunfan and Max Hesse – who starts on pole tomorrow – finished seventh behind Aoki/Miyake and Fong, while the extra solo driver pitstop time dropped Nandy and Absolute’s Lamborghini to eighth.
It was an uncharacteristically low-key outing for championship leaders Huang Ruohan and Alessandro Ghiretti who’d yet to finish any lower than fourth in the first four races. However, Absolute’s duo actually extended their points’ advantage by beating Anthony Liu and Dorian Boccolacci whose maximum success penalty resulted in Phantom’s Porsche finishing 10th.
GT World Asia’s second race begins at 11:35 JST (GMT +9) on Sunday. Watch it live on SRO’s GT World YouTube channel and app.
