KUALA LUMPUR: Johor Motorsports Racing (JMR) secured podium finishes in the Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia in Japan, held at the Suzuka International Circuit, this weekend.
JMR’s Tunku Putera Johor, Tunku Abu Bakar Sultan Ibrahim and co-driver Mikael Grenier put up a powerful performance to claim second spot in the Pro-Am class and third place overall in the seventh round yesterday, despite starting from ninth place.
The JMR duo driving Mercedes AMG GT3 Evo clocked one hour, one minute and 57.991 seconds to emerge runners-up in the Pro-Am, behind Origine Motorsports’ Wei Lu-Laurin Heinrich (1:01:55.765s), while Ruo Han Huang-Markus Winkelhock of Audi Sport Asia Team Absolute finished third (1:01:59.281s).
However, in today’s eight round race, JMR finished sixth overall and fourth in the Pro-Am category with 1:01:27.366s after a several incidents, including multiple safety car intervention and penalty.
“The heat was not helping with tyre wear, so we had to manage our tyres all weekend. I wanted to focus on having a clean race, and we worked hard to keep up with the other Mercedes,” Tunku Abu Bakar said in the team’s statement.
Tunku Abu Bakar, who will be hoping to improve from his fourth place finish in the 2023 series, is next set to rev the engines up in the upcoming rounds at the Okayama International Circuit from Aug 23-25, followed by Shanghai, China from Sept 14-15.
