And for the second year, the Asian Le Mans Series starts its season at the South Korea-based Inje Speedium, and again a Morgan LMP2 won the 3 Hours of Inje, although this time the team was OAK Racing Team Asia.
In the No. 1 Judd-powered LMP2 car, David Cheng and Ho-Pin Tung were menaced at the start by the other LMP2 effort, the No. 27 Eurasia Motorsport ORECA 03 of Richard Bradley, Tacksung Kim and John Hartshorne, the experience of the chinese duo prevailed in the end.
The race started with bad news as the already small 8-car grid was reduced to six cars, as Python Racing and ATL Wolf Asia couldn't field their cars, a Ferrari 458 GT3 and a Wolf GB08 repectively, due to damage.
The Eurasia ORECA took the lead when it was driven by Richard Bradley, which is the most LMP2 experienced of the lineup thanks to KCMG, but when Tacksung Kim and John Hartshorne took the car in their stints, they didn't found the pace to stay ahead, and were obliterated by the OAK duo at lap 50. If this wouldn't be bad enough, the team didn't crossed the finish line as Bradley suffered an accident at turn 2, ending any chances of a recovery race.
The CN class, that comes to stay until 2017 in the championship, saw CRAFT-Bamboo Racing race alone with their Ligier JS53, and although they had a troubled race, they managed to finish it in 5th place overall.
The GT class, which is expected to see combined the GTE, GT3 and GT300 classes on it, saw only the AAI Motorsports GT3 cars on the track, with the No. 92 BMW Z4 GT3 of Morris Chen, Ryouhei Sakaguchi and Marco Seefried get first in the class and second overall after 111 laps, 10 behind the OAK Racing winner car. This one was the attraction of the race, as the three AAI cars led at some point of the race, but a slow pit stop of the leading No. 91 BMW Z4 GT3 took away their chances of a class victory.
The next Asian Le Mans Series race is only in one month, at August 31st, at Fuji Speedway. It is expected a larger field in this race, although as the Super GT's International Pokka 1000 at Suzuka, that will be realized on the same day, will make the interested GT300 teams miss the event.
Photo: Asian Le Mans Series
The race started with bad news as the already small 8-car grid was reduced to six cars, as Python Racing and ATL Wolf Asia couldn't field their cars, a Ferrari 458 GT3 and a Wolf GB08 repectively, due to damage.
The next Asian Le Mans Series race is only in one month, at August 31st, at Fuji Speedway. It is expected a larger field in this race, although as the Super GT's International Pokka 1000 at Suzuka, that will be realized on the same day, will make the interested GT300 teams miss the event.
Photo: Asian Le Mans Series
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