Last lap pass earns Yu and Cheng first victory of 2025

Yu Kuai swept around the outside of Deng Yi on the final lap to claim his, Cheng Congfu and FAW Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom’s first GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS win of the season at Chang International Circuit in Thailand.

An hour earlier the same two Silver class cars, albeit driven by pole-sitter Luo Kailuo and Cheng, collided as the lights turned from red to green. But with damage from front-to-back contact minimal, both were able to continue en route to a grandstand finish.

Lu Wei and Bastian Buus completed the overall podium and won Pro-Am in Origine’s #4 Porsche after a post-pitstop Safety Car period bunched up the leading contenders.

A scrappy first lap ended the hopes of several big hitters, including Phantom’s Anthony Liu and Uno’s Rio who started second and fourth respectively, while this year’s standout Silver-Am entry – Team KRC’s BMW – was also spun around several corners later.

That helped Team 5ZIGEN’s Nissan shared by Hirobon and Yu Kanamaru to claim their first Silver-Am victory of the season in sixth overall behind JMR’s #99 Corvette and the second Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom R8.

Further back, EBM’s Setiawan Santoso and Martin Berry beat Garage 75’s David Tjiptobiantoro and Christian Colombo to Am class spoils.

YU’S MOVE MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

Audi Sport Asia’s Silver crew led their class standings heading into Race 1 but had failed to convert either of the outright pole positions scored at Sepang and Mandalika into strong overall results. Cheng lined up third this time but jumped the start and nudged Luo ahead into a slide.

That allowed Liu to get a semi-run around the outside entering Turn 1. The Harmony Ferrari took its natural line towards the apex and held firm, but as Liu turned in his Phantom Porsche was tagged by Rio’s Uno Audi. Both cars spun, forcing the pack behind to take avoiding action. Liu re-joined largely unscathed, albeit well down the order, but Rio’s R8 retired soon after in the pits thanks to a second hit from Craft-Bamboo’s #31 Mercedes-AMG.

Cheng slipped through the gap, and the two Silver entries circulated two-to-three seconds apart before the pitstops where the Audi served an additional five seconds for its jump start.

Behind them, Turn 1’s chaos jumbled the order considerably. Shigekazu Wakisaka and LM Corsa’s Ferrari were the chief beneficiaries, climbing 11 places to third ahead of Origine’s Lu Wei and Bob Yuan. The latter would not see the pit window, however: an off-track excursion blocked the Porsche’s radiator with grass, forcing it to overheat and retire on track just before the driver changes began.

Race Control waited until the 10-minute window closed before triggering the FCY and then Safety Car period that bunched the pack and set up such an entertaining finish.

Just over 10 minutes remained when the race went back to green. Driver gradings suggested the Silvers running one-two might be caught by the chasing pros, but the squabble between Giancarlo Fisichella, Buus, Patrick Pilet and Ben Green gave the duo vital breathing space to begin their own late race battle.

Yu latched on to Deng’s tail three laps before the finish but didn’t attempt a meaningful pass until one third of the way around the final tour when better traction out of Turn 3 helped him pull right of the Ferrari. There is only one line through the fast left hander that follows, but Yu ran out wide over the curb, kept his foot down, and swept around the outside. It was a breathtaking pass worthy of winning any motor race.

A pitstop infringement and resulting penalty dropped LM Corsa’s Ferrari out of top six contention shortly after Buus, Pilet and Green all found a way past Fisichella. They finished in that order before a post-race penalty in lieu of a drive-through moved Absolute’s Porsche down the order.

Fifth therefore went to Audi Sport Asia’s other entry shared by Bao Jinlong and Markus Winkelhock who started 18th but took full advantage of incidents and penalties ahead.

Hirobon and Kanamaru completed the revised top six in 5ZIGEN’s Nissan and became the first pairing other than Ruan Cun Fan and Maxime Oosten to claim Silver-Am class victory this year. KRC’s BMW limited the damage from its opening lap spin by battling back to ninth overall – the best finish amongst the outright championship’s erstwhile top three crews.

Ahead was the Craft-Bamboo Mercedes-AMG shared by Cao Qi and Daniel Morad that suffered significant bodywork damage after hitting Uno’s stationary Audi on the opening lap, and Henk Kiks and Loris Spinelli in the first of Absolute Corse’s two Lamborghinis.

Kiyoshi Uchiyama and Tsubasa Kondo took their Porsche Center Okazaki 911 to 10th overall and third in Silver-Am.