GTWC Asia Cup Climax Racing achieved top three results in Mandalika Friday practice day

News & Announcements Indonesia Pertamina Mandalika International Street Circuit May 9

On May 9, the second round of the 2025 GT World Challenge Asia Cup (GTWC Asia) officially kicked off at the Mandalika International Circuit in Indonesia. On that day, the event ushered in the official practice schedule on Friday to make final preparations for the qualifying and race on Saturday. Climax Racing took the top three in the afternoon qualifying preliminaries, showing its potential to hit the podium in the weekend race.

On Friday morning, the Mandalika Circuit was sunny and the clear weather created a good practice environment for the drivers. At 10:40, as the green light in the pit area came on, the one-hour official practice officially began, and two Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo cars of Climax Racing drove onto the track.

Gentleman driver Zhou Bihuang took the lead in driving the No. 2 car to warm up and adapt to the track conditions through a test run. The subsequent red flag caused the official practice session to be suspended, which also affected the subsequent practice plan of the team. The team decided to let Mercedes official driver Ralf Aron take over. After he took the stage, he conducted a long-distance test run and ran a personal fastest lap time of 1:29.805 with his fiery state, helping the No. 2 car team to rank sixth in the Pro-Am group.

At the same time, the No. 44 team was also practicing in an orderly manner. Zhang Yaqi took the lead in long-distance practice. During the 15 laps of practice, he constantly adjusted his driving rhythm and strived to find the best state. Then, teammate Ling Kang took over the car and continued to race on the track. In the last lap, Ling Kang achieved his personal fastest lap time of 1:29.943, helping the No. 44 team to achieve the third place in the Silver-Am category in this official practice.

After a short break, the 30-minute bronze driver practice came. The two teams of Climax Racing went out again. The two gentleman drivers continued to accumulate experience and improve their condition during this practice time. Zhou Bihuang drove the No. 2 car to a lap time of 1:30.747, ranking fifth in the Pro-Am category, and Zhang Yaqi of the No. 44 car ranked ninth in the Silver-Am category with a score of 1:31.861.

At 14:45 in the afternoon, the one-hour qualifying preliminaries officially started. The importance of this link is self-evident. According to the rules of the competition, if the qualifying cannot be carried out normally for some reason, the starting order of the race will be determined based on the results of the qualifying preliminaries. Therefore, the qualifying preliminaries have become the most critical track link before the qualifying on Saturday, and each car group strives to achieve ideal results in this section.

After the qualifying preliminaries began, Ralf Aron took the lead in the No. 2 car. After three laps of full preparation, he sprinted again. With extreme control and precise line tracking, he ran an amazing 1:29.078 in the fourth lap and came in third place. Zhang Yaqi took the lead in the No. 44 car. He completed a total of 8 laps and ran a personal fastest lap of 1:30.588 in the fourth lap, ranking fourth in the group.

However, just 15 minutes into the qualifying, the dark clouds over the Mandalika track suddenly turned into heavy rain, and all drivers chose to drive their cars back to the pit area. As thunderstorms followed in the following time, the race was red flagged when the countdown was nearly halfway, and the qualifying was forced to end early.

With the end of Friday's practice day, the Climax Racing dual-car combination began to show its edge, ranking at the forefront of their respective groups with outstanding performance, laying a solid foundation for the upcoming official showdown. Let us look forward to Saturday's qualifying and race, and look forward to the wonderful performances of the Climax Racing champions!