2018 saw a number of China GT Zhuhai lap records broken at the Friday qualifying session for the championship’s curtain-raiser at the Zhuhai International Circuit.

GT3 Class

KINGS Racing locked out the front row again and kicked off their 2018 campaign with a bang. In typical KINGS fashion, they hired the top guns in the business to lift them to the top of the timesheet. This time, 2017 Audi R8 LMS Cup champion Alessio Picariello were the pick for reigning GT3 champion Xu Jia, while PCCA star and 2017 China GT GTC Pro-Am Champion Will Bamber stepped in for Martin Rump to pair up with Wang Liang. Xu and Picariello set the fastest lap of 01:34.695, beating the 2017 Zhuhai record by nearly a second. Teammates Bamber and Wang finished with a time of 01:35.223, 0.3 seconds ahead of TSRT rivals David Chen and Cai Huibang. That makes it an all Audi top three. 

Kuo Kuo Hsin of D2 made it to the top of the Am/Am category with a time of 1:35.625, and took P4 in the overall classification. Rounding up the top 7 are: Chris van der Drift and Li Chao of JRM, Max Wiser and Billy Lo of TSRT Tianshi Racing, and Min Heng and Li Jiaqi of JRM. 

Picariello set the overall fastest lap with a time of 1:33.989 in today’s session, the only one to squeeze into the 1:33 seconds’ mark. 

#5 was disqualified as a result of a scrutineering infringement. 

GTC Class

CJ Huang had been a phenomenon last year, claiming six victories and three pole positions to secure the 2017 championship with races to spare. He seems to be continuing this momentum by clutching yet another pole (1:37.066) while beating his personal best time at Zhuhai by over 2 seconds. Xtreme Motorsports’ Dominic Ang and Song Bo drove their Radical RXC V6 Turbo to P2, while their less fortunate teammates in the #68 car encountered some issues and could not partake in qualifying. Porsche China Junior and rising star Daniel Lu partnered with Wang Tao in R+ Racings’ Porsche 911 GT3 Cup took P3, only 0.1 second behind Xtreme Motorsports. TSRT Tianshi’s Liu Peng, Chen Xiao/Guan Fangyuan, and R+ Racing’s Pan Chao and Shang Lei completed top six.

GT4 Class

Topping the timesheets of GT4 Class were Chen Junhua and Li Yuexun of Fist Team AAI. The Taiwanese duo made a switch from the GTC Lamborghini in 2017 to a brand new BMW M4 GT4, and went on the set a best average time of 01:44.523 to take pole for the overall class and the Am/Am category. Thomas Ashton and Lo Sze Ho in the KTM X-Bow GT4 of Xtreme Motorsports were only less than 0.1 second adrift of the pole-sitters, with Lo setting the fastest lap in session 2. Reigning GT4 champion of the Am category David McIntyre, along with old partner Dong Liang of Winning Team scored P3 with a time of 01:45.448. 

Same Lok and Eric Wong took P4 for Team Lotus while teammates Byford and Webb in #11, and Ang and Chan in #28 could not set a time during qualifying. Winning Team’s Ben Rouget and GT rookie Raph Lai in a second McLaren finished in P5 ahead of the old rivals China Equity AMR’s Zhang Dasheng and Shen Cheng (#118), Bill O’Brien and Yu Zhao (#619) and Yuan Tingting (#117).

Notably, Zhang Dasheng in the Aston Martin Vantage GT4 set the fastest time in the overall class with time of 01:43.146, breaking the class’ 2017 lap record by over half a second.

The fourth Aston Martin had an incident in an earlier session on Friday and did not make it out to qualifying. However repair work is underway and we can expect the #618 of Jack Mitchell and Liu Zexuan on the grid for Saturday.