DC Racing Survives Challenge from BBT for 4H Fuji Win

Jackie Chan DC Racing x JOTA has continued its domination of the Asian Le Mans Series season with Thomas Laurent, Harrison Newey and Stephane Richelmi surviving a challenge from BBT to win the Four Hours of Fuji on Sunday.

It is the No. 8 Oreca 05 Nissan’s second win in as many races so far in the Asian LMS season but didn’t come as easy as its Zhuhai victory in October, while the team also took home the LMP3 honors.

The main challenger to the DC Racing crew was the BBT Ligier JS P2 Nissan driven by Davide Rizzo, Pipo Derani and Anthony Liu Xu.

Liu started the race from pole position but lost the lead by the first corner to the eventual winning car. The BBT Ligier then spun off track, sending it to the back of the 15-car field.

Nevertheless, he made his way back through the field during the first hour and by the second hour the car had taken the lead from DC Racing in the pit stops.

It remained out front for 37 laps until Laurent took advantage of traffic to pass Rizzo for the lead with a little over one hour remaining.

Laurent held onto the lead for the rest of the race and came home one minute clear of Rizzo while David Cheng completed the podium in the second DC Racing car.

Guy Cosmo and Patrick Byrne took the LMP3 class win meanwhile, giving DC Racing two victories. 

They crossed the line five laps ahead of their nearest competitor after their No. 6 Jota Sport-run Ligier JS P3 Nissan proved to be the most reliable car while others faltered.

KCMG looked set to fight for the lead after winning in Zhuhai but a transmission problem took it out of the race while WIN Motorsport was sidelined by an engine failure.

Viper Niza Racing finished second after taking the position from the Taiwan Beer GH Motorsport car that stopped at the side of the track in the final few laps.

This allowed series returnee TKS to secure third with its Ginetta LMP3 despite several issues earlier in the race including problems with the steering and clutch.

FIST-Team AAI managed to come home with a 1-2 finish in the GT class despite a late-race stop-go penalty. 

Jesse Krohn was handed a two-second penalty for a pit stop infringement in his leading No. 91 BMW M6 GT3, allowing Marco Cioci to take the lead in the team’s Ferrari 488 GT3 with just minutes left on the clock.

It was AAI’s first race with its new Ferrari which was driven by Cioci, Ollie Milroy and Lam Yu.

Krohn recovered to finish second but 13 seconds down on his teammate.

Weian Chen brought the Tianshi Racing Team Audi R8 LMS back having lost three laps to the AAI entries despite his co-drivers leading much of the first hour.

RESULTS: 4H Fuji