Martin Rump and Cheng Congfu took a resounding round five Blancpain GT Series Asia win at Japan’s iconic Suzuka Circuit. The victory for the Absolute Racing pair – both members of the Audi Sport customer racing Asia driver pool – has catapulted them into second in the GT3 championship on 66 points, just three points from overall lead.
“It was a long-awaited victory for Martin Rump and Cheng Congfu. The whole team worked very hard to achieve it with consistent lap times and a great pit stop, which put our drivers back in the race lead,” said Michael Schneider, Team Manager of Absolute Racing.
It was a positive start to the weekend’s double-header too for OD Racing Team WRT’s Mitch Gilbert and Aditya Patel who crossed the line in seventh, with Phoenix Racing Asia’s Alex Yoong and Shaun Thong also recording a top 10 finish, taking the flag in ninth.
Absolute Racing’s other two Audi R8 LMS GT3 entries of Adderly Fong/Andrew Kim and Josh Burdon/Anthony Liu were unable to finish the race having both been caught by a spinning competitor in front of them whilst in Pro/Am podium contention with less than 10 minutes of the race to go.
KCMG’s local privateers Naoto Takeda and Takuya Shirisaka continued their remarkable 100% Am Cup winning streak after Shirisaka dramatically dived into class lead on the penultimate lap of the 60-minute sprint. The pair have now already reached 100 points in the classification at the halfway point in the season, 43 points ahead of their nearest challengers.
