FIA GT1, Beijing - Championship Race Report

The Championship Race at Beijing on Saturday afternoon was started behind the safety car as a result of the bad weather. After two laps circulating at a lower pace the green flags were shown on lap 3, but after just one lap things went wrong.

Into turn 1 several cars were involved in an accident, the nr 38 All-Inkl.com Münnich Motorsport Lamborghini and the nr 4 Hexis AMR Aston Martin DBR9 ending their races in the gravel trap - whilst the nr 9 Belgian Racing Ford GT continued slowly with bodywork damage, it returned to the pit where it retired. In order to recover the cars from the gravel trap the safety car was deployed.

Still under the safety car things went from bad to worse for the All-Inkl.com Münnich Motorsport team as their second car, the nr 37 driven by Dominik Schwager pulled to the side of the road and was also retired from the race.

Fifteen minutes and ten laps after the safety car had joined the track it released the field and the race went back to green. When the pit window opened a couple of minutes later the nr 7 Young Driver AMR Aston was leading the nr 8 and nr 4 Astons.

When all cars had made their pit stops the Hexis AMR nr 4 was leading the race thanks to yet another great pit stop by the French pit crew. It was followed by the two Young Driver cars.

Incidents for the nr 10 Belgian Racing Ford GT and the nr 40 Marc VDS Racing Team resulted in two more retirements. The nr 40 retired in the pit after colliding with the nr 21 Sumo Power GT Nissan, whilst the nr 10 went off into the gravel trap.

Andrea Piccini seemed to have an easy afternoon as he was some three seconds clear of the two following Aston Martins, but on lap 38 things went terribly wrong for the Italian. Jeroen den Boer spun his Corvette into the gravel trap at turn 1 and the safety car was deployed again and was ready to pick up the leading Aston. Instead of Piccini’s car the first Aston to turn up behind the Nissan safety car was the nr 8 car though. Piccini had lost control of his car and had gone off all by himself at turn 7.

The safety car remained on the track - just - until the end of the race and as a result Young Driver AMR secured another 1-2 victory in China. JR Motorsport’s Michael Krumm and Lucas Luhr scored valuable championship points by finishing in third place.

Argentina is the next stop for the FIA GT1 World Championship.