Jackie Chan DC Racing x Jota Sport appears unstoppable so far in the Asian Le Mans Series. The #8 ORECA 05-Nissan of Thomas Laurent, Stéphane Richelmi and Harrison Newey has won the second round of the season in Fuji, Japan. Only Team BBT's #37 Ligier JS P2-Nissan driven by Davide Rizzo, Pipo Derani and Anthony Liu took the lead momentarily, but Thomas Laurent snatched it back one hour from the checkered flag. "My teammates did a really good job at the start of the race, I was around 20 or 30 seconds behind the BBT car in front of us. I was able to close the gap and pass him in my first stint and I tried to manage our tyres for the rest of the race while managing my lead. The team did a really good job to maintain the cars as well as possible. A big thank you to my teammates and my team!" The #37 Ligier claimed the second step on the podium ahead of the second car for Jackie Chan DC Racing x Jota Sport, the #7 ORECA 05-Nissan shared by David Cheng and Jazeman Jaafar.
The Chinese team even achieved a double blow by also winning the LMP3 class with the #6 Ligier JS P3 driven by Guy Cosmo and Patrick Byrne. FIST Team AAI's Ferrari 488 GT3 shared by Marco Cioci, Lam Yu and Ollie Millroy had a relatively effortless race, allowing the driver line-up to reach the top step on the GT podium after taking advantage of a two-second penalty incurred by the team's other car, a BMW M6 GT3, for an offense committed during a refueling stop.
Check out the race standings here.
The third round of the ALMS season is set for January 13th in Buriram, Thailand.
VIDEO: YouTube - Asian Le Mans Series
PHOTOS: Asian Le Mans Series Facebook page