KRC Plotting Two-Car Assault With BMW Factory Driver

Team KRC has outlined plans to tackle this year’s GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS with two cars, one of which is set to be driven by a BMW factory driver.

The Zhuhai-based team has been a fixture of the series for the past two seasons with a single car in the Silver-Am class, and won that category last year with the BMW M4 GT3 EVO shared by ‘Tony’ Ruan Cunfan and Maxime Oosten.

Team director Mars Kang confirmed to Sportscar365 that for the team’s third season in GTWC Asia, KRC will tackle the top Pro-Am class for the first time with Ruan sharing driving duties with an as-yet unnamed member of the BMW works stable.

Oosten meanwhile will spearhead the Silver-Am entry alongside Taiwanese driver Brian Lee, who makes the switch from GTO Racing.

“We have limited resources, so I want to keep the team at a good scale and not become huge,” Kang told Sportscar365. “I always choose projects carefully and make sure we have the proper preparation in terms of funding and drivers.

“This year we will have two cars in GTWC Asia, and we will have two GT3 cars in China GT and one GT4 car. We will be quite busy.

“Brian Lee, who is a good friend of mine, wants to switch from Porsche to BMW. So I will pair him with Maxime, who is one of the best Silver drivers.

“‘Tony’ [Ruan] will switch to the Pro-Am class, and BMW will assign a Pro driver, which we are still finalizing. So we’ll have one Pro-Am car and one in Silver-Am.”

KRC made its first outing in the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour this month, finishing fifth overall with a car shared by Ruan, Oosten and Max Hesse, and second in the Bronze class behind Porsche squad High Class Racing.

It marked the team’s second Intercontiental GT Challenge appearance as it also entered last year’s Suzuka 1000km, for which Neil Verhagen joined Ruan and Oosten.

Asked about the team’s IGTC plans for this year, Kang said at least a one-car entry at Suzuka is confirmed and did not rule out a bid for a CrowdStrike 24 Hours of Spa appearance off the back of its successful first attempt at Bathurst.

“[Suzuka] is our plan, and we may do more races in the IGTC,” said Kang. “We could consider Spa. But Suzuka is already our plan, with at least one car, but we’ll see if Brian wants to join. If he does, then we could enter both GTWC Asia cars.”

Despite deepening ties with BMW, Kang played down the prospects of being the brand’s main representative at Suzuka later this year, even though the Bavarian marque has said it would like to involve Asian teams more in its IGTC efforts in future.

“We need to improve more to get BMW to take us fully seriously,” said Kang. “But as a small team, we are doing quite well with our limited resources.

“I think we have the ability to become a top team in Asia. I hope we can achieve this goal.”