Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG Makes History At Sepang With Pole For Inaugural Michelin 12H Malaysia

Less than two hundredths of a second determined GT3 pole position for the inaugural Michelin 12H MALAYSIA during an exciting qualifying at Sepang International Circuit this afternoon, with Chinese team Climax Racing brilliantly sealing the top spot with its No.999 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO.

Across three sessions of very closely matched action, the GT3 PRO-AM squad of Elias Seppänen, Zhou Bihuang and Tanart Sathienthirakul – who will be joined by Li Lichao for Saturday’s race – ended with an average time of 2m04.556 seconds to pip the No.10 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) to pole for the first race of the 2025/2026 Michelin 24H SERIES Middle East Trophy.

“It’s a long race, 12 hours, a lot can happen – but pole position is the best place you want to start the race from”, said a very happy Seppänen, “There is a lot of tough competition, we of course give our best and the car is feeling good. We made good improvements throughout the last two days, so we’re very confident for the race.”

Patric Niederhauser set the quickest time of all in the third session, a time of 2m03.893 seconds, which hoisted the No.10 Porsche to within a whisker of pole with its three driver average of 2m04.573 seconds. Niederhauser is joined at the Hong Kong team by Antares Au and Loek Hartog, the latter in Q2 just three hundredths shy of Niederhauser’s ultimate pace.

Row two of the GT3 grid is an all-Porsche lock-out with the No.87 Origine Motorsport car of Bo Yuan, Ye Hongli, Lu Wei and Liu Hangcheng third and taking GT3-AM pole, only three tenths of a second away from the front row, ahead of the No.26 Winhere Bquik Absolute Racing entry of Alessandro Ghiretti, Deng Yi, Henk Kiks and Vincenzo Ricci.

In the 992 class for Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992) cars, Red Camel-Jordans.nl earned pole position in another great battle with Mühlner Motorsport. Brothers Rik and Luc Breukers, joined by Adrian Flack, grabbed top spot on the class grid with an average of 2m09.330 seconds – just 0.049 seconds ahead of Mühlner’s Porsche shared by Paul Meijer, Jiatong Liang and Bayley Hall.

Pole position in GT4 went to Cerny Motorsport’s BMW M4 GT4 (G82) which, in the hands of Bryce Fullwood, Spencer Propper and Damien John Hamilton, was eight hundredths faster than GTX pole qualifier Vortex V8 with the No.701 Vortex 2.0 of Lionel Amrouche, Philippe Bonnel and Victor Moutinho. In TCE-TCX, asBest Racing’s Cupra TCR DSG – piloted in qualifying by Pia Ohlsson, Lutz Obermann and Junichi Umemoto – will start from class pole.

GT3:

Malaysia’s Dominic Ang headed the first qualifying session for Viper Niza Racing in the No.65 Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO with a time of 2m05.231 seconds, just four hundredths of a second quicker than the Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG of Bihuang.

Far East teams were rapid from the start and locked out the top four positions in Q1 in GT3, with Origine’s Wei in third another half second back in the No.87 Porsche 911 and Absolute Racing’s No.10 Porsche a further tenth adrift, with Au at the wheel.

In Q2, Seppänen rocketed to the top of the times in the session and also overall with an excellent time of 2m04.020 seconds in the Climax Mercedes part way through – just before a mid-session stoppage which was caused when the GTX class Vortex entered the gravel at Turn 14.

The action resumed with six minutes to go and Hartog swiftly leapt to second on average for Absolute Racing with the fastest lap of Q2, a time of 2m03.928 seconds in the No.10 Porsche. Third overall at the chequered flag was Viper Niza Racing, Melvin Moh lapping with a time of 2m04.676 seconds in his Mercedes, with Origine fourth on average – Hongli lapping in 2m04.222s.

Going into the third and final 15-minute qualifying period, little more than 0.3 seconds covered the top four cars. On his first flying lap of the session, Niederhauser posted an electric lap of 2m03.684 seconds for Absolute but the time was disallowed for track limits. Instead, Origine’s Yuan went top with a lap of 2m04.696 seconds to give the squad provisional pole by half a second.

Into the second half of the session Sathienthirakul posted a 2m04.372 seconds for Climax, before that man Niederhauser then responded with his lap of 2m03.893 seconds to take Absolute to second on average behind Climax. Ghiretti in the Winhere Bquik Absolute Racing Porsche was also blindingly fast, his Q3 best of 2m03.896s only three thousandths shy of Niederhauser’s quickest.

Neither the Continental Racing by Simpson Motorsport Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO II or the Herberth Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R (992) participated in qualifying, the former due to a gearbox change and the latter because of an electrical issue.

992:

China’s 610 Racing led the way in the 992 class during session one with Li Lin at the wheel of its Porsche 911 GT3 Cup (992), but midway through the always sensational Paul Meijer rocketed to the top spot with a time of 2m08.866 seconds. At that point, the Mühlner Motorsport car was a full two seconds ahead of its closest challenger.

For session two, Luc Breukers got behind the wheel of the Red Camel-Jordans.nl Porsche and delivered a best time of 2m09.041 seconds which elevated the No.909 entry to within just 0.2 seconds of the Mühlner car, the latter remaining on top of the average times with Jiatong Liang.

Hall took the final session for Mühlner with Rik Breukers taking over from his brother for Red Camel, and Breukers produced a scintillating lap of 2m08.006 seconds to grab pole position by just 0.049 seconds on average times from Mühlner. Third in 992, and taking the 992-AM class pole, was the 610 Racing team of Lin, Yang Haojie, Lu Zhiwei and Cao QiKuan.