OD Racing completes Zhejiang sweep as GruppeM takes Blancpain GT Asia title


The awful weather this Sunday (15) at Zhejiang wasn’t exactly a good scenario for the Blancpain GT Series Asia finale, but still brought some smiles to teams and drivers out there, with OD Racing taking the race win but GruppeM Racing and Hunter Abbott claiming the title of the new series.

As it occurred on Saturday, the rain and the wet track made the Safety Car join in right from the start for two warm-up laps before the cars go all-out, and the green flag was waved the No. 86 OD Racing Audi overshoot the first corner and opened the door for the No. 18 KCMG Audi to get the lead, returning in second in the middle of a huge pack of R8 LMS cars, taking a conservative approach due to the track condition.

Martin Rump in the No. 18 proved how much adapted he was to Zhejiang by clocking multiple fastest laps and increasing the gap to the No. 86, but the guys giving quite a show were Andre Heimgartner and Congfu Cheng in the No. 88 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche and the No. 13 Absolute Audi, fighting almost side by side for the sixth place as if they were in a dry track, looking for all the spots available to attack.

From the pit window time it was clear that KCMG’s strategy was to let Rump have as much track time as possible to then deliver the No. 18 to Sanghwi Yoon in order to maintain its lead position, and with 26 minutes to go Rump finally brought it to the pits for driver change. Most of the order hasn’t changed apart from a spin that sent the No. 13 Absolute Audi down the table.

Things were going in favor of Yoon even though he was losing gap to Aditya Patel, then a spin of the No. 18 with 13 minutes to go handed the lead to the No. 86, and then it was time for the No. 88 to go past Yoon to get second place. The No. 88 still tried to reach the No. 86 but Aditya Patel was firm in his driving and brought the car to victory, and completing the podium and winning teh Pro-Am class was the No. 18 KCMG Audi as Yoon resisted the pressure of Hunter Abbott in the No. 999 GruppeM Mercedes, and while the Brit didn’t get a win or a podium, he got the biggest prize in form of the first Blancpain GT Series Asia title.

While losing the overall title, the No. 5 Audi Hong Kong pair of Marchy Lee and Shaun Thong still got the Silver Cup title by finishing sixth.


The Am class was won again by CMRT Eurasia in the No. 69 Aston Martin and James Cai and Kenneth Lim clinched the class title, and in GT4 the No. 89 HubAuto Porsche won by doing a conservative race while the No. 77 CRAFT-Bamboo Porsche took second place and the class title while the main rivals in the No. 10 EKS Porsche crashed in the final lap but still finished third.

GruppeM Racing also got the GT3 teams title with good gap to OD Racing, while CRAFT-Bamboo Racing took the GT4 teams honors.

PHOTO: Blancpain GT Series Asia

Comments