Most of the Blancpain GT Series Asia titles will be decided in the last race of the year, including the GT3 overall one, as the No. 27 HubAuto Ferrari of Jono Lester and Nick Foster won the Race 1 at Ningbo, which kept Foster in the run to bring the crown to Australia.
The No. 999 GruppeM Mercedes had all sorts of disaster once it crossed the start/finish line, as not only the car lost the top spot but also got tangled with the No. 97 Indigo Mercedes in Turn 1 and went straight to the barriers. Nico Bastian tried to get back, but the car came to a halt soon after that.
What came after was a sequence of contacts that took out the No. 23 KCMG Nissan, the No. 37 Absolute Audi and the No. 911 CRAFT Bamboo Porsche, and with so many cars stopped on track of near it, the Safety Car entry was an obvious decision.
Almost 15 minutes were needed to clean the mess, and with green flag again, Dennis Lind in the No. 19 FFF Lamborghini tried get away from the pack to compensate for his time ballast, but Jono Lester in the No. 27 HubAuto Ferrari wouldn’t make this easy. Despite being a wide circuit, Ningbo doesn’t offer a lot of overtaking points, so only a few brave ones were contributing to the show.
The GT4 class was offering quite the spectacle with the No. 666 GruppeM Mercedes trying to go past the No. 81 Studie BMW, and with no success in the task, Ryuichirou Ootsuka brought the car to an early pit stop to deliver it to Reinhold Renger.
Fortunes to the No. 19 went from good to real bad after the pit window, with the No. 5 Absolute Bentley of Alex Yoong forcing the way past for fourth, and with a bunch of car taking advantage of an unsetlled No. 19, the Lamborghini dropped down to seventh, though it recovered a place when the No. 5 lost pace.
Nick Foster in the No. 27 HubAuto Ferrari was well and truly established in the lead since the end of the pit window, but with 12 minutes to go the Safety Car joined the track again as the No. 11 TTR SARD Porsche stopped on track. Foster was safe due to traffic separating him from the No. 3 Absolute Audi, but once the green was waved with 5 minutes to go, Martin Rump was quick to act in order to close in the leader, though the gap wasn’t enough to attack the No. 27. As Foster wouldn’t have any troubles, he just had to cross the finish to consolidate the win for HubAuto Racing.
Change of positions past the pit window also benefited the No. 666 GruppeM Mercedes as the No. 81 Studie BMW wasn’t able to get near it, so Reinhold Renger was able to put another GT4 class win in his record. A late penalty for passing under yellow flag condition threw the No. 81 from second to seventh in the class as 30 seconds were added to its total time.
Martin Kodric and Dennis Lind (No. 19 FFF Lamborghini) lead ahead of the final race of 2018 with 145 points against 140 of Nick Foster and 123 of Patric Niederhauser, which effectively leaves the Swiss driver as a hopeful outsider in the GT3 title race. The 197 points of Reinhold Renger gave the GT4 crown to him as Takayuki Kinoshita and Sunako Jukuchou have 171 points and are unable to catch it even in the best of the scenarios. FFF Racing leads the GT3 teams standings with 242 points against 233 of GruppeM Racing, so it’s open fight between Lamborghini and Mercedes on Race 2.
Kodric and Lind also fight for the Silver Cup title with Foster, as the Australian holds 177 points against 172 of the Lamborghini duo, and in the Pro-Am Cup, Hiroshi Hamaguchi and Marco Mapelli (No. 63 FFF Lamborghini) have 174 points, and will try to hold the lead against Yukinori Taniguchi as he has 158 points.
PHOTO: SRO
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