2025 GTWC Asia Cup moves to Mount Fuji, Climax Racing strives for good results in first race in Japan

News & Announcements Japan Fuji International Speedway Circuit July 11

This weekend, the 2025 GT World Challenge Asia Cup will start the fourth race of the season at Fuji Speedway in Japan. After the three consecutive races in Southeast Asia in the first half of the year, the event will officially start the second half of the 2025 season. Climax Racing will continue to send the Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo car to compete in the first Japanese race of the GTWC Asia Cup season!

Car No. 2 will continue to be driven by Climax Racing's chief driver Zhou Bihuang and Mercedes-AMG official driver Ralf Aron. In the last round of the Buriram Station in Thailand, Car No. 2 unexpectedly encountered a mechanical failure in the first round and unfortunately withdrew from the competition early. In the second round, the two drivers performed well. Zhou Bihuang rose to the third place in the final stage, helping the team to successfully reach the podium!

The Fuji Speedway in Japan is 4.563 kilometers long and is located at the foot of Mount Fuji. The track has a 1.5-kilometer long straight road and consists of a large number of medium and high-speed corners. At the same time, the track has a huge height difference, which puts a test on the vehicle settings and the driving requirements of the driver.

At the same time, this weekend's GT World Challenge Asia Cup introduced a new formula of tires------Pirelli DHG. The new tires are somewhat different from the previous formulas, which puts forward requirements for the team's pre-race test content arrangement on Thursday. The team needs to quickly master the characteristics of the new tires in 3 hours and adjust the vehicle settings accordingly.

On Thursday, the pre-race test drive officially started. During the total 3-hour test time, the team conducted a comprehensive test of the new formula tires. Ralf Aron took the lead and gave feedback to the team after making a benchmark on the track. Zhou Bihuang took over and conducted multiple rounds of short-distance sprint tests to verify the performance of the tires under extreme conditions.

After that, with the arrival of heavy rainfall, the track surface was slippery, and the team changed to rain tires for another test, and Ralf Aron and Zhou Bihuang took turns driving to adapt to the rainy environment in advance. In the end, the No. 2 car team ranked 14th in the whole field with a single lap time of 1:40.121, and ranked second among all Mercedes-AMG racing cars.

On Friday, the GT World Challenge Asia Cup Japan Fuji Station will hold official practice, bronze driver practice and qualifying preliminaries. Climax Racing will go all out to strive for better results.

GT World Challenge Asia

Japan Fuji Station Schedule (Beijing Time)

July 11 (Friday)

10:10-11:10 Official Practice

11:15-11:45 Bronze Driver Practice

14:45-15:45 Qualifying Preliminary

July 12 (Saturday)

7:40-7:55 First Qualifying Session

8:02-8:17 Second Qualifying Session

11:55-13:00 First Round Race (60 minutes + lead car)

July 13 (Sunday)

10:40-11:45 Second round of the race (60 minutes + first car)