Everything simply went spot on for the Mercedes AMG GT3 during the inaugural edition of the Suzuka 10 Hours, third round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge, with Blancpain GT Asia team GruppeM Racing getting overall honors with the No. 888 car, driver by Tristan Vautier, Maro Engel and Raffaele Marciello. The highlight is that the top-5 had five teams running Mercedes machinery.
The No. 27 HubAuto Ferrari had the control of the race during the first but after this the No. 888 GruppeM Mercedes took the lead, though the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes offered quite a challenge during the second hour with Mikael Grenier at the wheel. After that the top positions settled for a Mercedes vs. Ferrari battle between the No. 888 GruppeM and the No. 27 HubAuto while the No. 43 Strakka Mercedes was rounding the top-2. Just outside the top-5, the No. 07 M-SPORT Bentley and the No. 23 KCMG Nissan kept their consistency for the whole time though were unable to attack the ones ahead of them.
With three and a half hours the first top-5 victim was claimed as the No. 23 KCMG Nissan stopped on track, and was rescued right after that, then ending its participation. After that, the No. 66 WRT Audi and the No. 6 Absolute Audi joined the top-5 group, but they were far away from the lead battle, which was between the No. 888 GruppeM Mercedes and the No. 43 Strakka Mercedes.
At the six hour mark Nissan lost another car as the No. 018 KCMG car also said goodbye to the race with engine problems, leaving the No. 11 Gainer TANAX car as the only Nissan on track, though way down the table in 15th. An off-track trip for the No. 07 M-SPORT Bentley made the car have cooling issues and forced an earlier stop than planned for the stint near the eighth hour, leaving only the No. 08 Bentley in chase of the podium.
The No. 00 GoodSmile Mercedes was climbing the table superbly since the fifth hour, and once the No. 07 had its problem it rose to fifth overall, but with the lap deficit to the leaders, any improvement would be a hard task. The last two hours were done with evenly paced cars between the top five, so no one proved to be a threat to the dominant win of the No. 888 GruppeM Mercedes, with the No. 43 Strakka Mercedes coming in second while the No. 6 Absolute Audi came in third.
The No. 00 GoodSmile Mercedes was the best Japanese based team, finishing in fifth overall, while the No. 75 SunEnergy1 Mercedes translated their early domination in a Pro-Am Cup win.
Now all preparations are set to the California 8 Hours, final race of the 2018 IGTC season, to be held at Laguna Seca on October 28th.
PHOTO: GruppeM Racing
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