Lamborghini claimed its first victory of the 2024 Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia season as VS Racing’s Edoardo Liberati and Bian Ye came out on top amid torrential rain in the second race of the weekend at Okayama in Japan.
The success not only moved the #6 crew into the mix for third in the drivers’ standings heading into the final round of the year next month, but also marks the first time since 2018 that Lamborghini has tasted victory in the continental GT3 series.
Having finished the weekend’s opening one-hour race in sixth place, Bian and Liberati started fourth on the grid for race two on Sunday. With rain in the air, Liberati made a sensational getaway off the rolling start to vault straight into the lead as the lights went out, leaving the rest of the field to squabble among themselves. They did just that, with the pole-sitting Mercedes tipped into a spin at turn one as the rain began to fall.
Liberati held the lead either side of a brief early safety car period but faced pressure from the pair of chasing Porsches behind, twice staving off assaults from Bastian Buus and Dorian Boccolacci respectively. The rain then started to get even heavier, forcing many crews to either pit for wet tyres or gamble on the slick compounds they started the race on. Liberati elected to stay out on slicks initially but eventually came into the pits to switch to wets as the rain intensified.
This decision proved an inspired one as Liberati established a healthy net lead of the race – the Porsche of Yasuoka stayed out on slicks – as both Buus and Boccolacci crucially stayed out a lap longer than the Lamborghini, but the conditions had already deteriorated too much for the overcut strategy to pay off.
Liberati then caught and passed Yasuoka for the overall lead and held a six-second margin over the Mercedes of Luca Stolz which came down to just over three seconds by the time the mandatory pit window opened. Liberati swapped with Bian with 25 minutes of the race left, but the #6 car had a slender advantage over the Mercedes entering the second half.
Bian withstood that early pressure before opening up a lead of over two seconds which quickly ballooned to over five seconds entering the final stages. With a clear track in front of him, Bian came home a comfortable winner at the end of the race, taking the #6’s first victory of the GT World Challenge Asia season to consolidate their sixth place in the drivers’ standings.
The final round of the GTWC Asia season takes place on the weekend of 13-15 September at the Shanghai International Circuit in China. Bian and Liberati have 72 points in the standings, 10 points behind fifth place and 26 points behind third with a total of 50 points still available in China.
