TRIPLE Eight Race Engineering’s GT squad took a remarkable win in the latest race of the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia Powered By AWS round at Fuji Speedway on Sunday, despite taking the chequered flag in 14th place.
Its #88 JMR Triple Eight Mercedes-AMG, driven by Prince Abu Bakar Ibrahim and Bathurst 12 Hour winner Luca Stolz, was awarded the race victory after the cars that provisionally filled the first 13 places were all handed post-race time penalties.
All of the penalties stemmed from the race’s third and final Safety Car period, which began with 20 minutes remaining in the hour-long event.
A mechanical failure pitched the #77 Craft-Bamboo Racing Mercedes-AMG of Jeffrey Lee heavily into the pitwall, leaving the car stranded on the front straight and a large debris field.
That prompted race officials to direct all cars to head through the pit lane instead of along the front straight, prior to being picked up by the Safety Car – but very few cars followed the order.
Ibrahim, who was running fifth at the time, was one of just four cars that headed to the lane.
The race resumed with six minutes remaining and the #88 Mercedes-AMG down in 19th, but Ibrahim regained a handful of spots to sit 14th at the finish.
Crucially, he was just under 17 seconds behind the car that claimed the chequered flag first, the #47 D’station Racing Aston Martin of Satoshi Hoshino and Tomonobu Fujii.
The podium ceremony had already taken place by the time the stewards handed down their findings, which included 30-second penalties for all cars that didn’t pass through the pits as requested.
That accounted for the first 13 cars on the road, including Triple Eight’s sister #888 entry of Richie Stanaway and Prince Jefri Ibrahim which had finished 13th but remained 13th once all the post-race penalties had been applied, plus much of the remaining finishers.
Behind the #88 Mercedes-AMG of Ibrahim and Stolz, Earl Bamber Motorsport’s #8 Porsche of Setiawan Santoso and Kiwi racer Reid Harker also avoided the penalty and was elevated to second place as a result.
Third place was filled by the first of the penalised cars, but not the #47 Aston Martin. That car received an additional 10 second penalty for breaching track limits while making a pass for position, thus elevating the #4 R&B Racing Porsche of Lu Wei and Dennis Olsen to the final podium position.
It had really been a day for penalties.
The #2 Climax Racing Mercedes-AMG of Zhou Bihuang and Dennis Lind led the race up until the final lap, but were faced with serving two separate pitlane drivethrough penalties for contact with other cars during the race. Although it pitted from the lead at the end of the final lap to serve one of them, the time penalty for the unserved drivethrough plus the 30-second penalty for the Safety Car infraction dropped it to 25th in the results.
The provisional AM-class winner also lost the honour through penalties. Tadao Uematsu brought his #55 Team Uematsu McLaren home in a remarkable sixth outright and would still have been the first AM-class car home despite the Safety Car penalty, but he was also levied a further post-race time penalty for making his compulsory pit stop outside the specified window.
The revised results leave Ibrahim and Stolz in second place in the GTWC Asia standings, one point behind overall leaders Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak and Alessio Picariello with two of the six rounds completed.
