Sims Stars as JMR Wins in First Weekend With Corvette

Johor Motorsports Racing scored a first victory for the Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R in GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS competition in the second leg of last weekend’s opening round of the new season at Sepang.

Factory Corvette star Alexander Sims and Prince Jefri Ibrahim took their No. 99 JMR to victory in the second race of the weekend at the Malaysian track on Sunday, taking an early championship lead, while defending champions Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli were victorious on Saturday in their No. 87 Origine Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 R.

Sims and Ibrahim had looked on course to finish third in Sunday’s race until seven minutes to go, when Lu Wei, driving the No. 4 Origine Porsche, made contact at Turn 2 with the leading No. 2 Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo of Zhou Bihuang.

Lu was handed a drive-through penalty for causing Zhou to spin, allowing Ibrahim into a lead he would maintain to the checkered flag — delivering Corvette its first victory on Asian soil on JMR’s first weekend with the new car.

Ralf Aron had maintained the lead from pole in the opening stint aboard the No. 2 Climax car ahead of the Team KRC BMW M4 GT3 Evo of Maxime Oosten, the Phantom Global Porsche of Dorian Boccolacci and Sims before the pit stops and a safety car, caused by an incident involving the other JMR Corvette of Jordan Love, shuffled the order.

While Bihuang maintained the lead after taking over from Aron, Lu found himself second after teammate Bastian Buus ran fifth early on, ahead of Ibrahim, Ruan Cunfan in the KRC BMW and Cao Qi’s No. 31 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG.

Cao passed Ruan to claim second for himself and Mercedes-AMG Junior driver Jayden Ojeda, once the leading two cars were removed from contention, while the Silver Cup-entered No. 45 FAW Audi Sport Asia Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo II of Franky Cheng demoted Ruan a further place to claim the final spot on the overall podium.

Rounding out the top six were the top two finishers from Saturday’s opener, the Origine Porsche of Yuan and Ye, and the Phantom Global Porsche that Anthony Liu took over from Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific selected driver Boccolacci.

Yuan and Ye enjoyed a relatively straightforward run to the win in Race 1, from third on the grid, as an early incident for the Uno Racing Audi of Shaun Thong that had started second promoted Yuan to second behind the pole-winning Audi of Cheng.

Thong’s spin triggered a multi-car incident that required a safety car period, which prevented Cheng from building the lead he would need to overcome the car’s eight-second pit stop penalty applied to Silver Cup entries.

It meant that Ye took over the lead at the stops, with Boccolacci second after taking over the Phantom Global car from Liu, with Ye edging away over the remainder of the distance to win by a comfortable 7.9 second margin.

Cheng’s teammate James Yu emerged third after the stops, but was passed by both Oosten’s KRC BMW and Sims in the JMR Corvette, dropping to fifth.

Sims and Ibrahim hold an early lead of two points in the championship over Yuan and Ye, with Oosten and Ruan ten points off the top spot in third.

The GTWC Asia season continues with the second round of the season at Mandalika Circuit in Indonesia on May 10-11.

RESULTS: Race 1/Race 2