Kiwi Earl Bamber came from behind to hoist his second win on the Marina Bay street circuit in Singapore in round 10 of the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia.
Starting from sixth, Bamber (LKM Racing) cleared out to win by almost 5s over Martin Ragginger (Team Porsche Holding) with Alexandre Imperatori (PICC Team StarChase) salvaging third from his pole position.
Local Yuey Tan (Dorr Havelock Racing) took the Class B win after Alif Hamdan (Nexus Racing) was handed a 30s penalty for shunting Francis Tjia (OpenRoad Racing)
Meanwhile Bamber has assumed a handy 21-point lead with two rounds of the championship remaining as he tries to defend his title.
Bamber set off to hunt down Ragginger, whom he caught and passed on lap 7 after a pitched battle.
“We put our heads down and just did our best, and today best was first,” Bamber said.
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“It was very clean and fair and I think we put on a great show for the Singapore fans.
“LKM Racing have given me a fantastic car all season and that makes my life easier – they’re just a stunning team.”
The championship will be settled with rounds 11 and 12 as part of the Sports Car Champions Festival at Shanghai from October 17-19.
FIA World Rallycross Championship
Petter Solberg won the German round of the World Rallycross championship after a gripping finish claimed as the closest in the history of the sport.
The former World Rally Champion beat Mattias Ekstrom in the final race with a margin of five thousandths of a second.
Robin Larsson was third in his Audi A1 Supercar.
The epic finish was witnessed by 10,000 fans at the Estering circuit in north-west Germany.
“Wow, I don’t know what to say – I don’t think I have seen anything so close in my whole life,” Solberg said.
The victory sees him clear out to a 52-point lead with three rounds remaining.
“The plan today was not necessarily to win but when I saw Robin’s [Larsson] mistake, I knew I had a chance,” Solberg continued.
“Then on the second last lap I made a mistake – I couldn’t remember if there was one more to go so I hesitated at the joker and lost some time.
“I heard on the radio that I needed to go flat out to the finish so I really pushed on the last lap. I didn’t even know if I had won when I crossed the line, it was a really incredible moment.”
Round 10 of the FIA World Rallycross Championship is scheduled for the all-new RX track of Franciacorta in Brescia, Italy from September 27-28.
United SportsCar Championship
Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas secured victory for the Ganassi Riley squad at the Austin round of the championship at the Circuit of the Americas track.
Benefitting from a canny strategy to claim victory by 2.3s from the Oak Racing Ligier/HPD of Alex Brundle with Christian Fittipaldi’s Action Express Corvette taking third.
Pruett said: “We knew the finish was going to be tight (on fuel).
“We didn’t have the pace, but we thought we would have a lot more of a fighting chance by stretching it to just doing two stops.”
In the GT LM class, Dominik Farnbacher and Jonathan Bomarito led home the sister Viper SRT GT-R of Kuno Wittmer and Marc Goossens.
Luis Diaz and Sean Rayhall (8Star OREC-Chevrolet) landed the Prototype Challenge class while GTD was taken out by Ben Keating and Dutch journeyman Jeroen Bleekemolen in a Dodge Viper SRT GT3.
Australian James Davison had scored his third successive pole position in GTD, but failed to finish the race after a driveshaft failure.
Blancpain Endurance Series Nurburgring 1000km
Laurens Vanthoor clinched the Blancpain Endurance Series title as his WRT Audi squad won the Nurburgring 1000km.
Vanthoor, who shared the WRT entry with Cesar Ramos and Christopher Mies, took the victory by almost a minute from the HTP Mercedes of Sergei Afanasiev and Stef Dusseldorp and Max Buhk.
The Black Falcon Mercedes of Hubert Haupt, Abdulaziz Al Faisal and Andreas Simonsen claimed the final place on the podium.
Meanwhile, Brisbane’s Liam Talbot finished third in the Gentlemen Trophy class behind the wheel of the Kessel Racing Ferrari 458.
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