Round six of China GT delivered perhaps the best racing in the history of the burgeoning championship, with some incredible moves across both the GT3 and GTC/GT4 classes keeping the big Zhuhai crowd on their feet for much of the day.
In the end, Estonia’s Martin Rump stunned the GT3 class with an epic drive through the field that came down to the closing laps, with an intense battle raging between his Kings Racing Audi and the Porsches of Martin Ragginger and Chris van der Drift. At one stage the battle pack was six cars long – and often, three cars wide – but in the end, no-one could slow Rump’s momentum, continuing his podium streak that also presented he and team-mate Wang Liang with their second win of the season – in the process giving Wang the championship points lead.
In the GTC category, another amazing race saw two charging New Zealanders mix up the action in the closing stages as they tracked down runaway race leader Huang Hsi Chan, a late safety car intervention bunching up the field before a string of drivers received penalties for restart infringements, allowing TSRT’s David Chen to bring the #888 Audi to the fore, the Chinese driver comfortably across the line ahead of Xu Wei and Ling Kang in the Radical RXC and Chris van der Drift sharing the JRM Lamborghini with Shang Lei.
In GT4 the emerging battle between the points leading McLaren 570S GT4 of David McIntyre and Roelof Bruins and the Team Lotus Evora GT4s continued, Sam Lok and Clement Li getting the top points after qualifying at the front of the field in the morning session, before taking the #36 Evora to their first win of the season.