Choi Crowned Champion as Absolute Wins Race 2 in Shanghai

Photo: SRO

MG Choi has been crowned Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia champion after scoring a fifth-place finish in Saturday’s season finale at Shanghai International Circuit, while Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli won the race.

Choi shared his Solite Indigo Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Manuel Metzger but is ahead of his co-driver on points after sharing with Gabriele Piana and Patric Niederhauser earlier in the season.

Victory for Bo and Hongli’s Porsche 911 GT3 R further cemented Absolute Racing’s teams’ title, meanwhile.

Vutthikron Inthraphuvasak finished runner-up in the championship standings, 18 points down on Choi, and would have had to win the race to have any chance of taking the title himself.

He finished third in the race, driving a Panther/AAS Motorsport Porsche with Alexandre Imperatori, behind Craft-Bamboo Racing’s Mercedes shared by Alessio Picariello and Jeffrey Lee.

Chris van der Drift started from pole in a mixed-up grid order after crash damage prevented the ARN Porsche from starting first.

Metzger made early progress from 13th on the grid, moving up to ninth in the first two laps but later benefitting from problems for two other title-contending cars.

Yuya Sakamoto’s HubAuto Corsa Ferrari 488 GT3 remained stranded on its jacks after they failed to retract, while Absolute’s No. 911 Porsche shared by Tanart Sathienthirakul and Philip Hamprecht had a wheelgun failure and later a gearbox problem that forced the car to retire.

Choi and Inthraphuvasak both had clean stops and took advantage of cars ahead of them serving pit stop penalties, putting both of them into the top five until the end of the race.

BMW Team Studie’s Sunako Jukuchou took his seventh GT4 class win of the year to confirm himself as class champion, meanwhile.

RESULTS: Race 2

Jake Kilshaw

Jake Kilshaw is a UK-based journalist. He is a graduate of Politics and International Relations.