Guven, Trulli Reinforce Porsche Ranks for Okayama

Porsche stars Ayhancan Guven and Enzo Trulli will both make one-off GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS appearances in next week’s Okayama round.

Reigning DTM champion Guven will make his series debut alongside title contender Anthony Liu in the No. 37 Phantom Global Porsche 911 GT3 R Evo in place of Dorian Boccolacci, who is away on GTWC Europe Endurance Cup duty at the Nürburgring.

Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific Selected Driver Trulli meanwhile makes his bow for EBM, which is making a one-off Silver-Am class entry for he and Adrian D’Silva.

The addition of the EBM 911 helps bring the entry for the Okayama round to 24 cars, one fewer than were entered at Fuji.

Klaus Bachler will make his second outing of the year in the No. 918 Absolute Racing Porsche, which returns to the grid after skipping July’s Fuji round, with regular driver Bastian Buus also instead competing at the Nürburgring.

With the car’s usual FIA Bronze-rated driver Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak still out of action, SRO Japan Cup Kazuki Ota will instead share with Bachler.

Elsewhere, BMW factory driver Neil Verhagen returns as co-driver to ‘Tony’ Ruan Cunfan in the No. 89 Team KRC BMW M4 GT3 EVO for the first time since the Sepang opener.

Absolute Racing’s No. 29 Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2 will have a second driver for the first time this year in the form of Sandy Stuvik, who returns to GTWC Asia for the first time since the 2022 season to partner Akash Nandy.

For the first three rounds of the year, Nandy drove the car solo.

Garage 75’s Am class-entered No. 75 Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo has an all-new lineup comprising two Bronze-rated Japanese drivers, ‘Cold Max’ and ‘Yamatatsu’.

Harmony Racing, which has up to now fielded three Ferraris, is down to only two entries as the No. 13 car normally driven by Sun Jingzu and Adderly Fong is absent.

Absolute Porsche pair Alessandro Ghiretti and Huang Ruohan lead Origine Motorsport’s Lu Wei — partnered again at Okayama by Laurin Heinrich — by four points at the halfway point of the season, with Liu a further four points back in third.

The first one-hour race of the Okayama weekend is set for 1 p.m. local time on Saturday (12 a.m. EST), while the second race is set for 10 a.m. on Sunday (Saturday 9 p.m. EST).