A new chapter in
Asian sportscar racing history started this Saturday as the Blancpain
GT Series started its inaugural season
with the first race at the famous Sepang
Circuit in Malaysia. While the race was
full of battles, the OD Racing Audi
of Mitch Gilbert
and Aditya Patel
had a clean race to victory with a large advantage to the opposition.
Once the lights were
green the lead battle raged on between the No. 86 OD Racing Audi and
the No. 37 BBT Ferrari
until the second corner, chaos after the line sent two cars to the
wall, being them the No. 90 Team AAI BMW
and the No. 12 Clearwater McLaren,
and brought the first yellow flag. Procedures took 10 minutes to be
completed and then the green came again with the No. 86 OD Racing
Audi leading while Anthony Liu got the braking of the No. 37 BBT
Ferrari a bit wrong, had a slide on Turn 1 and let the No.
99 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche pass for
second. Later on the lap Liu struggled to holg the No. 5 Audi Hong
Kong car and the gold and silver machine got past it at the home
straight for third place.
The nature of the
Sepang circuit favored a lot of battles like the one with the No.
91 AAI BMW and the No.
888 GruppeM Mercedes for sixth place,
won by the Bavarian car. A bit ahead, Darryl O'Young had to deal with
Marchy Lee and Anthony Liu to hold second place, and while none of
them were successful on their moves, Jules Gounon took the
opportunity to bring the No. 88
CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche to fourth place.
Liu took the worst effects of the multi-car battle with a punctured
tire, and went straight to pits.
Still on the second place
matters, O'Young wasn't rid of Marchy Lee, but again Lee's attempts
led to an unsettled car as O'Young's defence remained rock-solid. As
the No. 86 OD Racing Audi entered in the pits the battle between Lee
and O'Young was for the lead until the No. 99 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche
finally went in for the pit-stop. The car returned with Li Zhi Cong
to the track and lost a position to the No. 91 AAI BMW, being now in
fifth.
The pit window
shuffled things a bit, even though the No. 86 OD Racing returned to
lead with Aditya Patel at the wheel. FIA WEC racer Joël Camathias in
the No. 88 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche had to deal with the No.
5 Audi Hong Kong and the No. 91 AAI BMW
to keep in second, and when the No. 5 with Shaun Thong opened the way
on Turn 1, the No. 91 and the No. 999
GruppeM Mercedes got past Camathias,
taking second, third and fourth respectively. Thong still got his
hands full trying to deal with Jesse Krohn in the No. 91 car, and
after a lot of close ones, the BMW finally got past for second, with
Raffaele Marciello in the No. 999 car also overtaking Thong.
Marciello tried to overtake Krohn at the final hairpin with 12
minutes to go, failing as he went wide, but then later in the lap
Marciello succeeded, taking second place and continuing the quest to
reduce the gap to the leader Aditya Patel in the No. 86 OD Racing
Audi.
The last eight minutes
were dedicated to see the brave effort of Raffaele Marciello reducing
the gap to Patel, and while Marciello was improving his pace lap
after lap and was beating race records, Patel was way ahead of the
Italian, so the No. 86 OD Racing Audi had only the work to cross the
finish line to get its first win in the series. The GT4 class was won
by the No. 77 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche as Frank Yu and Jean-Marc Merlin
had quite a dominating performance during the whole race.
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