Although the haze is now out of sight, the threat of a downpour could turn the tides at the second round of the 2015 Asian Le Mans Series taking place at Sepang International Circuit. Luckily during the race it was just a light drizzle compared to the one hitting the MCS race earlier on, allowing the drivers to open the taps and go wild on the circuit once the sun came out.
Unlike the World Endurance Championship or the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Asian Le Mans Series does not have the highest tier LMP1 competing. Instead, the line-up is made up from five categories: LMP2, LMP3, CN, GT and GT Am. The race was fought in a three-hour endurance format kicking off from a rolling start.
Getting a big jump from the start, the #8 Oreca 03 R Judd driven by Nicolas Leutwiler and Shinji Nakano from Race Performance grabbed the top spot in the LMP2 category after starting the race behind the pole sitter.
Coming in second place was Algarve Pro Racing in the #25 Ligier JSP2 driven by Michael Munemann, Dean Koutsoumidis and Jamie Winslow with a gap of 46.361 seconds behind the winner.
Although Eurasia Motorsport did clocked a fastest lap time in the race with a 1:59.961, the trio of William Lok, Tack Sung Kim and Richard Bradley only managed to finish third in class in the Oreca 03R Nissan.
The fight between the two LMP3 machines saw the #1 DC Racing emerging victorious with David Cheng, Ho-Pin Tung and Thomas Laurent in the Ligier JSP3, fighting against the #89 Team AAI’s ADESS 03 driven by Alex Kapadia, Masataka Yanagida and Ollie Hancock.
The two teams competing in the CN class both use the same Wolf Racing GB08 race cars, but it was the #21 Avelon Formula that took the win. Driven by Denis Lian and Giorgio Maggi, they finished the race 52.383 seconds ahead of the #69 Atlantic Racing Team piloted by Zen Low, John Bryant Meisner and Toshiyuki Ochiai.
The GT class represents most of the cars in the field and there was non-stop action throughout the three hours of racing. And in this race, experience backed with a superior race machine proved to be the winning formula as the #3 Clearwater Racing McLaren 650S GT3 took the win for the class. Driven by W.S. Mok, Rob Bell and K. Sawa, they finished one lap ahead of #91 Team AAI’s BMW Z4 GT3 driven by Junsan Chen, Dirk Muller and Ollie Millroy.
Finishing in third place was the #90 Team AAI Mercedes AMG SLS GT piloted by Tatsuya Tanigawa and Lam Yu.
Even though they are the sole entrant in the GT Am class, Christian Reid, Paul Ip and Dan Wells were more than excited to compete as a team in the #51 KCMG Porsche GT3 Cup. With 75 laps in the bag, the actually finished 14th overall, in front of two LMP3 machines!
