GruppeM Racing’s patience was rewarded in the second Blancpain GT Series Asia race at Fuji this Sunday (22), and once the No. 999 Mercedes AMG GT3 took the lead, things didn’t change as Patric Niederhauser did an impressive job on what Nico Bastian started.
The start was dominated by Alexandre Imperatori as he kept the first position in the No. 18 KCMG Nissan, keeping both HubAuto Racing Ferraris at bay and then trying to open the gap. In the GT4 class, the No. 81 Studie BMW kept the lead with ease while the sister No. 82 car had a moment in the barrier after a spin, though Max Chen quickly recovered from it and kept going without further damage.
Despite the efforts of Davide Rigon and Raffaele Marciello, Imperatori kept a solid gap until the pit window. Imperatori tried also to maximise his stint as much as the pit window limit permited to deliver it in a comfortable situation to Yukinori Taniguchi as KCMG had to count the success penalty carried from the Saturday win.
When the pit window was over the top group was completely different as the No. 888 GruppeM Mercedes took first place while followed by the No. 63 FFF Lamborghini and the No. 999 GruppeM Mercedes, while the No. 18 KCMG Nissan fell down to fourth. Hiroshi Hamaguchi not only resisted the pressure of the Mercedes behind him, but also overtook the one ahead of him and managed the lead until a spin took him out of contention in the final minutes.
The No. 999 Mercedes was flawless in the lead and kept it until the checkered flag, leaving the complications for the No. 888 one as the No. 63 was faster and only lost second place by a tenth of a second, meaning that not only GruppeM kept the 1-2, but also a double class win, in Silver Cup and in the Pro-Am Cup.
The GT3 Am Cup and GT4 winners didn’t suffer changes from the Race 1, with the No. 45 KCMG Audi and the No. 81 Studie BMW again having flawless races and going straight to the checkered flag.
The Blancpain GT Series Asia now heads to China for its final pair of double headers, with Shanghai being the next stop on September 22nd and 23rd, with a big change already announced, as Phoenix Racing Asia taking the spot as Asia’s Bentley customer from Absolute Racing, as their pair of Audis will give place to two new Continental GT3s, being then the first team outside M-SPORT to race them.
PHOTO: SRO
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