GT3 Rookie Ghiretti Aiming to Repay Porsche’s Suzuka Faith

Alessandro Ghiretti says he hoping to repay the faith shown in him by Porsche as he tackles the weekend’s Suzuka 1000km for the first time as part of a Pro lineup.

The French Porsche-contracted driver is sharing the Bosch-liveried No. 7 Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo with Ayhancan Guven and Dorian Boccolacci in what marks his first time fighting for outright honors in a marquee GT3 event.

It comes amid twin campaigns in Asia for Ghiretti, who is participating in GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS as well as the Thailand Super Series, both for Absolute.

Speaking after setting the fourth-fastest time in pre-qualifying on Saturday morning, Ghiretti said his aim is to put together a clean weekend, learn from his co-drivers and prove that he is deserving of more such opportunities in big races.

“I want to thank Porsche and Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific for believing in me, because I know this is a really important event for them,” Ghiretti told Sportscar365.

“To be in a Pro line-up straight away with really strong guys as a GT3 rookie, I feel super proud. Now I need to show I deserve it and I will give it my all.

“First I want to make no mistakes and show the team they can trust me, and then the speed will come. The target is not to try and beat the big names I am sharing a car with. I just want to learn as much as I can from all the top guys I have around me. 

“So far we have shown good performance in both the wet and the dry. Ayhancan was super-fast in the wet, and in pre-qualifying I was P4 and quite close to the top, and the fastest Porsche. So I think we are ready to fight and give it our all.”

He added: “A lot of people around the world know this race, so it would be an unbelievable race to win. Dorian did the race last year, but I’m a rookie in GT3, Ayhancan has a lot of experience but he is new to the circuit, it would be mega.

“We have a good team, so let’s see what we can do. If we put everything together and we work cleverly, we can do something good. Winning is hard to predict, so I can’t say we’ll definitely win, but hopefully we will have no regrets after the race.”

Ghiretti is returning to Suzuka for the first time since winning twice at the circuit en route to title success in Porsche Carrera Cup Asia in 2024, a campaign that followed him being selected as a Porsche junior driver at the end of the 2023 season.

He returned to Europe last year to win the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and also contest Carrera Cup Germany, while also taking his first steps in GT3, but the current season marks his first full-time at the wheel of Porsche GT3 machinery.

“I have a special relationship with Asia,” Ghiretti said. “It started in my first year in singe-seaters, when I won the Formula 4 South East Asia championship in 2018.

“I finished third [behind Rinus VeeKay and Yifei Ye] when I did the F3 Asia Winter Series [in 2019-20], but it was a really strong field and I was happy with the result.

“Then I came back to Carrera Cup Asia in 2024 and I won again. And now this year, in GT World Challenge Asia, we were leading the championship until the last round, and we are still in the game, and Thailand Super Series is also going well.

“When I became Porsche junior in 2024, I told [PMAP managing director] Alex Gibot that I really wanted to race in Asia and he made it happen.

“It’s always a pleasure because the tracks are so cool and the conditions are usually quite hot and humid, which is a challenge to adapt to compared to Europe.”

Ghiretti and his Absolute co-driver Huang Ruohan won the opening race of the GTWC Asia season at Sepang, and led the championship up until the first race of last month’s fourth round of the season at Okayama International Speedway.

The pair now sit 22 points behind fellow Porsche driver Lu Wei with just the final rounds at Beijing and Shanghai to go, after losing further ground when Ghiretti was involved in a multi-car melee on the first lap of the second race at Okayama.

“We won the first race and we scored two more podiums after that, then it started to become trickier in the two Japanese rounds,” he said. “But there are still two weekends to go, and anything can happen. We just need to stay out of trouble and perform.

“There are still 100 points left, and we are 22 points behind, so anything is possible.”