The motorsport year is slowly coming to an end, and the Porsche team Manthey Purerxcing has already won the championship in the FIA WEC (World Endurance Championship) in the penultimate race of the season in the LMGT3 class. But the decision has also long been made in other championships – congratulations to our long-standing partners and customers.

At Fuji Raceway in Japan, Klaus Bachler, Alex (Aliaksandr) Malykhin, and Joel Sturm finished second in their Manthey-Purerxcing Porsche 911 GT3 R (#92) to win the team and driver classifications in the LMGT3 FIA Endurance Trophy. Somehow, history seems to repeat itself.

The three of them booked their ticket to the FIA WEC by winning the Asian Le Mans Series championship at Sepang at the beginning of the year.

Team WRT’s BMW M4 GT3 (#46) took third place in the LMGT3 class in Japan.

Ahmad Al Harthy, Maxime Martin, and Valentino “Dottore” Rossi shared the cockpit of the M4, which, like all Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo and Porsche 911 GT3 R worldwide, is homologated with KW V6 Racing dampers.

Seventh in LMGT3 was the D’Station Racing Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo Team (#777), while the Aston Martin (#27) of the Heart of Racing Team crossed the finish line in ninth place.

The second Team WRT BMW M4 GT3 (#31) finished tenth in class, and the second Porsche 911 GT3 R (#91, Manthey EMA) crossed the finish line in 14th place.

The exciting thing in Japan was that our LMGT3 motorsport customers had to roll up the field from the midfield and the back.

Unfortunately, the race in Fuji ended early for the Lamborghini IronLynx LMDh Team with the Lamborghini SC63. In qualifying, the Lamborghini SC63 made a historic breakthrough: Daniil Kvyat secured his place in the top 10 Hyperpole Shootout for the first time with a time of 1:29.721.

In the subsequent 10-minute session, he improved to 1:29.582 and secured ninth place on the starting grid. Only 0.681 seconds separated him from the pole position – the smallest gap to the top field that the SC63 was able to achieve in qualifying this season.

At the start, the Lamborghini fell back to the back of the LMDh field due to contact with another hypercar. In the course of the race, the SC63 caught up again and was in the top 10.

The #63 was often involved in on-track battles and overtook the #93 Peugeot, with whom it drove close for most of the race. After the first stop, the car was given a 10-second penalty, but that didn’t stop the #63 from leading a WEC race for the first time before the second pit stop.

Lying in 13th place, the Lamborghini SC63 retired due to a powertrain problem about 90 minutes before the end of the race. The retirement was a bitter blow for our LMDh customer, Lamborghini Iron Lynx.

At the finale of the GT World Challenge Asia at the Shanghai International Circuit, our motorsport customers took first place in both races.

So it was no wonder that Sunday’s winners, Yuan Bo and Leo Ye Hongli (Porsche 911 GT3 R, #87) from the Porsche racing team Origine Motorsport, won the drivers’ championship with a seven-point advantage. Origine Motorsport also won the team championship.

Their closest pursuers in the championship were defending champion Anthony Liu, who shared the cockpit with Alessio Picariello in 2024. With their Absolute Racing Porsche 911 GT3 R (#1), they finished first in Shanghai on Saturday and second in the championship (drivers’ and teams’ standings).

In 2024, a total of eleven 911 GT3 R cars from the Porsche customer teams Absolute Racing (#1 and #911), Origine Motorsport (#4 and #87), Phantom Globale Racing (#13), GTO Racing Team (#14), Porsche Center Okazski (#18 and #25), Vollgas Motorsports (#44), AMAC Motorsport (#51) and AAS Phantom Global Racing (#93) were in action in the GT World Challenge Asia, which is held in China, Japan, Malaysia and Thailand.

Like the Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 Evo race cars fielded by EBM (#8) and D’station Racing (#777) and the only BMW M4 GT3 (#89) fielded by Team KRC, the Porsches are equipped with KW V6 Racing dampers ex works.

On the same weekend, the finale of the Hankook 24h Series was also held in Barcelona, where not only GT3 race cars but also GT4 and TCR race cars, as well as various “Silhouette Cars” and “Special Touring Cars,” were on the grid.

The Porsche 911 GT3 R Team of Herberth Motorsport won the teams’ classification and the drivers’ championship with 180 points with its three drivers, Ralf Bohn, Jason Hart, and Scott Noble (Porsche 911 GT3 R, #91). In addition, the title is GT3-AM (188 points).

Photos Organizers, various, teams