Guest Entries Boost Field to 32 Cars For Shanghai Finale

Four new or returning entries have boosted the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS grid to 32 cars for this weekend’s season finale at Shanghai.

Elegant Racing rejoins the series for its first outing since June’s Fuji round with its Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo, driven by Macau’s Liu Lic Ka solo in the Am class.

Phantom Global Racing, Harmony Racing and EBM are meanwhile fielding an additional car apiece as guest cars, which are not eligible for points.

Sharing duties in the No. 2 Phantom Global Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II will be Hu Bo and Porsche Carrera Cup Asia regular Dylan Pereira, who will contend for Pro-Am honors.

Harmony’s No. 99 Ferrari 296 GT3 will be entered the Silver-Am division and will be shared by Liu Hangcheng, who up to this point drove for Climax Racing, and Luo Kailuo, who returns after missing the previous race at Okayama.

The EBM-entered No. 321 Porsche 911 GT3 R will be shared by Li Xuanyu and Lu Wenlong, who likewise will compete in Silver-Am.

Three Japanese cars are not making the trip to the Shanghai round, which marks Fanatec GT Asia’s first visit to China since 2019.

These are the No. 25 Porsche Centre Okazaki Porsche, the No. 60 LM Corsa Ferrari and the No. 777 D’station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo, the latter owing to the clash with the Fuji round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

The entry list for Shanghai contains some notable driver changes compared to the Okayama round.

Chief among these is the return of Porsche factory driver Laurin Heinrich to the No. 4 Origine Motorsport Porsche, whose Bronze driver Lu Wei is leading he championship. Heinrich previously partnered Lu at Sepang and Suzuka.

Markus Winkelhock has a new teammate in the No. 40 Absolute Racing Audi in the form of Antares Au, who replaces Huang Ruohan.

At Craft-Bamboo Racing, Daniel Morad and Maximilian Goetz return to the No. 30 and No. 88 Mercedes-AMG entries respectively, Morad for the first time since Suzuka and Goetz for the first time since the second round in Buriram.

Elsewhere in the Mercedes-AMG stable, Mikael Grenier also takes over from Luca Stolz as the Pro driver in the No. 888 Triple Eight JMR car for his second outing of the year.

Heading to Shanghai, Origine’s Lu takes a lead of 16 points over stablemates Leo Ye Hongli and Yuan Bo, with Absolute Racing Porsche duo Anthony Liu and Alessio Picariello a further three points behind in third place.

Victory for Lu and Heinrich in Saturday’s opening race would be enough to clinch the title assuming that Ye and Yuan finish third or lower.