< Previousautobabes.com.au MOTORSPORT Liu and Rizzo take the new Ferrari 488 to victory in Thailand Chang International Circuit, Buriram, Thailand After Audi’s Marchy Lee and Shaun Thong put an end to the Bentley domination of the GT Asia Series during the opening race at Chang International Circuit in Buriram, Ferrari opened their ledger in race two, with Anthony Liu and Davide Rizzo claiming an emotional victory over 2015 Thailand winner Duncan Tappy. The fourth round of the championship was certainly a race of two halves, after an issue on circuit forced a lengthy Safety Car intervention mid-race, which all but destroyed the chances of points leader Jonathan Venter, as co- driver Fabian Hamprecht was unable to complete his compulsory pit stop until after the Safety Car returned to pit lane. Ultimately a lengthy stop - by virtue of the parity penalty they endured for dominating the opening round in South Korea - eliminated the duo from contention, dropping Venter back behind new points leaders Liu and Rizzo in the standings. In the GTC class, the battle continued between Porsche and Ferrari, and despite the performance deficit that the Maranello built machines felt they suffered, it was the turn of the prancing horse in round four, 2015 race winner Voravud Bhirombhakdi and new team-mate Tin Sritrai taking a popular win over the second of the Singha Motorsport backed cars - points leaders Bhurit Bhirombhakdi and Kantasak Kusiri. Round#4 (60-minutes) Fortunately predicted rain didn’t arrive at the Chang International Circuit, however humidty was up well over where it had been during the opening race, making conditions a little more challenging for the drivers. By virtue of setting the pole time in Saturday’s second qualifier, Liu led the field away with the FFF Racing Team by ACM Lamborghini in close pursuit. Behind them though chaos ensued in turn one, with Andrew Kim spun sideways in front of the chasing pack, fortunately without any contact, the rear bumper on the #8 Bentley providing some indication of the other car involved. Kim was able to quickly right the #7 Bentley and set off in pursuit of the field, but with a big job ahead of him. Amici knew that his only chance to attack the Ferrari would be early in the race, so he drew alongside Liu on the run down to turn two, and tried to stick with him through the 180-degree corner, but the power of the new twin- turbo 488 was too good, Liu getting away from the Lamborghini as he put his head down and charged. By lap three he was up by almost two seconds, with Hamprect over a second down on the Lamborghini. Behind them Alex Au had made a blistering start to be right on the tail of opening race star Piti Bhirombhakdi, whilst behind him Phoenix Racing Asia team- mate Marchy Lee was forced to recover from a spin at turn 12 on the opening lap after technical issue left him with little brake pressure. Frustration for the front row starter after holding on to third off the line. Lee quickly mounted a recovery as Liu punched out a 1:35.400 to open up an eight second lead ahead of the compulsory stop. For many of the amateur drivers, they hit the pits almost as soon as the window opened, but for leaders - Liu, Amici and Hamprecht - they stayed out a little longer, Hamprecht ultimately going to the end of his maximum allowable 55% race distance before firing down pit lane, but just half a lap before that happened, officials called a Safety Car intervention for an issue on circuit. Unknown to many of the drivers who circulated behind the Safety Car not seeing any sight of a stricken car, a services cover inside turn four had become dislodged, presenting a potential danger to the teams, officials electing to slow the pace of the field whilst it was investigated, a situation which closed pit lane and froze the pit stop window, much to the frustration of the #8 team. Ultimately the field circulated for six laps behind the Safety Car, bunching the leaders which presented an interesting scenario ahead of the restart. Rizzo led the field away, from Liberati in the Lamborghini, Tappy in the #9 Bentley and the super-impressive #98 GruppeM Racing Porsche after a spectacular opening stint by super-sub George Richardson put Tim Sugden right in the box seat. Carlo Van Dam was next in line, ahead of renowned hard-charger Richard Lyons, Adderly Fong, Alex Yoong, reigning champion Darryl O’Young and race one winner Shaun Thong. On the restart it was game on, with Rizzo charging immediately, his greatest threat coming in the form of the fastest man to have ever circulated the Buriram circuit in a GT3 car - Duncan Tappy.autobabes.com.au Tappy was quickly through on Liberati and in pursuit of the red and yellow Ferrari which had stretched its lead to more than two seconds. Whilst the lead battle presented a focal point for the fans, so too the middle of the pack with a terrific battle brewing between Sudgen, Yoong, Lyons, Fong, O’Young and Thong, all six cars separated by less than a car length, keeping the big Buriram crowd on their feet. Tappy got to within half a second of the leader, forcing Rizzo to dig perhaps deeper than he’d ever dug before, the Ferrari maintaining the gap at just under a second despite the menacing black Bentley with flashing headlights right behind him, to cross the line for victory and the championship points lead. The true gravity of the win was immediately apparent, with Anthony Liu jumping onto the roof of the #37 Ferrari as soon as Rizzo stopped on the main straight for the podium presentations, the Chinese driver punching the air repeatedly to the applause of his team. Second for Duncan Tappy and Vutthikorn Inthrapuvasak was celebrated by Bentley, the team carrying #GetWellSoonAndrew on the side of all three Bentley Continentals GT3s in support of the #9 car’s regular driver Andrew Palmer who remains in hospital in the USA. Third across the line was FFF Racing’s Edo Liberati, handing he and co-driv- er Andrea Amici their second podium of the season, ahead of the impres- sive Carlo Van Dam who had claimed an pole in opening qualifying, before streaking away from the field in the opening stanza of race one. Fifth was Alex Yoong, the former F1 driver taking over after an impressive opening stint by Alex Au, the pair re- covering from the frustrations of retir- ing in race one after a technical issue with the gearbox forced an overheat- ing alarm and a premature stop. Sixth was an ectastic Tim Sugden who admitted that after a five year sab- batical ahead of the opening round in South Korea, that he’d rediscovered his passion for motorsport, his young charge George Richardson (Sugden is Richardson’s manager) doing nothing to sour the team’s enthusiasm for the new Porsche GT3-R. After watching team-mate Hamprecht work his way into the lead ahead of the pit stops, the #8 Bentley team of [then] points leader Jonathan Venter could only lament what-if post race, the team who perhaps plays strategy better than anyone in pit lane, suffer- ing at the hands of fate. Venter was typically quick in his stint, but he could do no better than eleventh, 21-sec- onds down on the leaders. From Thailand, the GT Asia Series turns its focus to Japan, with back-to- back rounds, starting from Okayama on the first weekend in July, before a return to the iconic Fuji Speedway two weeks later. Keep up to date with the GT Asia Se- ries website - www.gtasiaseries.com for news and updates - and through social media; www.facebook.com/ GTAsiaSeries which will also feature news, video clips, images and up- dates, and you can also get involved in the conversation on www.twitter.com/ GTAsiaSeriesautobabes.com.au 1. Anthony Liu (#37 BBT Ferrari 488 GT3) “I’m ecstatic.. We’ve been pretty much on the back foot with the BoP, the Ferrari has been too slow. We came here, we saw the BoP had been rebalanced, so we had a chance, but they notified me that I’d been upgraded to silver again, despite the FIA classification, so that gave us an extra 12-seconds, so we had to drive like superman to qualify for race two, and had to drive like a slow man in race one to maximise our chances.” 1. Davide Rizzo (#37 BBT Ferrari 488 GT3) “It was a bit difficult after the pit stop to get into the rhythm. I knew also that we had a short time to the end of the race, and they were telling me to push because the Bentley was coming, so that’s what I did. Anthony gave me the car with a nice advantage at the front, but the Safety Car ruined our plans and we had to start do everything again.” 2. Duncan Tappy (#9 Bentley Team Absolute Bentley Continental GT3) “I think we can be very happy. We’ve come together [Tappy and Vutthikorn] to race at the very last minute and collected two podiums. Vutthi has done a really, really good job - he’s been really fast and sensible and stayed out of trouble, he handed me the car in a good position. We managed to get our pit stop in at the right time, then there was a bit of confusion when the Safety Car was out about where we were, but I thought it could play into our hands a bit and it did. We were sitting in a good position and I passed a couple of guys to get onto terms with Rizzo. I tracked him down, but couldn’t quite get there.” 2. Vutthikorn Inthrapuvasak (#9 Bentley Team Absolute Bentley Continental GT3) “I was very lucky to find a way through the incident at turn one. After that I was up to P4, but defending all the time. What the Drivers had to say ...autobabes.com.au I pretty much did all the defending while Duncan did all the hunting, so it’s a pretty good combination [laughs].” 3. Andrea Amici (#55 FFF Racing Team by ACM Lamborghini Huracan GT3) “I was second into the first corner, then touched the leader going into the second corner, but after that the Ferrari was faster. We pushed as hard as we could, but for the moment, we are at the limit. During the Safety Car we lost a little time, but overall we’re very happy.” 3. Edo Liberati (#55 FFF Racing Team by ACM Lamborghini Huracan GT3) “We tried to take advantage today by saving two sets of tyres for this second race. I had quite good pace, but still with new tyres I could not catch the others and the Bentley was 5-10kph faster in a straight line, so I couldn’t defend. Andrea [Amici] did a fantastic start and he pushed like crazy to catch the Ferrari.” 1. Voravud Bhirombhakdi (#89 Singha Team Thailand Ferrari 458 Challenge GTC) “Today’s result may be down to motivation I suppose. The start was okay, I was alongside the Porsche, but there was an incident in turn one - he went on the outside, and I went on the inside to avoid it. I was then able to pass him at turn three after he went wide, so after that we were leading so we just pushed as hard as possible. I managed to make the gap two or three seconds, then just managed that gap until the pit stop. The stop went well - a lot better than yesterday - then Tin [Sritrai] took the wheel and finished the race. I’m very happy, for myself and the team and it’s great to be back on the podium.”FOR JUNIOR, CONFIDENCE IS KEY TO WINNING AT DAYTONA By Kenny Bruce | NASCAR.com Dale Earnhardt Jr., considered perhaps the best restrictor-plate racer competing in NASCAR today, is 12th in points as drivers and teams arrived this week at Daytona International Speedway, site of Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 Powered by Coca-Cola (7:45 p.m. ET, NBC, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). His last victory came last November in Phoenix, 17 races ago. Not an extraordinarily long time, but notable just the same. Notable, in part, because Saturday’s race kicks off a 10-race run leading up to this year’s Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup. Earnhardt Jr. plans on being one of the 16 drivers competing for the title. “Obviously we need to get a win to put all that to bed but nothing is guaranteed,” Earnhardt said Thursday at DIS. “If we don’t get a win going into the Chase we’re going to have to do well in these next 10 races and just be real consistent.” Consistency has been something of an issue for the No. 88 team, one of four fielded by Hendrick Motorsports, this season. And his involvement in on-track incidents has been more frequent. Sixth in points after back-to-back runnerup up finishes earlier this year, Earnhardt has scored just one in the eight races that followed. The month of May, he said, was both disappointing and frustrating. “We’re a little frustrated with how we ran through the month of May,” Earnhardt said. “We’ve seen more speed out of our cars (but) had some bad finishes, wrecks … tore up a lot of cars this year, uncharacteristic, I think, for us to be in so many accidents. “So where we are in points is very frustrating. It creates a lot of anxiety between me and Greg (Ives, crew chief). I think we are both not happy with where we are in the points. “Wondering and worrying about trying to make the Chase shouldn’t be something that we’re concerned with. I think we’re way better than where we are. In the past several years, we’ve sat around the top five in points throughout the season. Things just came easier for us. They’re not coming so easy today and we’ve just got to keep working.” Earnhardt has qualified for the Chase for five consecutive years and eight times since he made the move to Sprint Cup fulltime in 2000. Recent efforts have been promising, in spite of the end result. He was 11th at Sonoma, “a place that I really don’t like to race and don’t really think I’m very good at,” he said. He finished 39th a week earlier at Michigan, where he said the car was fast, but “we just didn’t get a chance to see it and get up there and see where we could go with it. “So I’m not real worried about our speed because I feel like we’ve had good speed over the last couple of weeks; certainly in May we didn’t and that was hard to do and frustrating. Hopefully we just get to Richmond and we don’t have a lot of pressure about trying to make the Chase. We’ve just got to put a string of races together that will give us a cushion between us and the next guys fighting for those last few spots.” That string could start this weekend. Ten of his 26 career victories in Sprint Cup have come in restrictor-plate races (four here at Daytona and six at Talladega Superspeedway), making him a favorite anytime the series visits the two mega-facilities. He’s the defending winner of this weekend’s race. But this year it was rival Denny Hamlin (Joe Gibbs Racing) scoring the win in the season-opening Daytona 500 and some two months later Brad Keselowski (Team Penske) was celebrating in the Winner’s Circle at Talladega. DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The speed has been there. The results, in terms of wins, have not. autobabes.com.auautobabes.com.au Both races ended long after Earnhardt had exited the scene. In order to contend for the win here, Earnhardt said, a driver needs a car that is nearly perfect in all aspects. With rain delaying the majority of Thursday’s practice sessions, just how good his No. 88 entry is this weekend remains an unknown. “That really makes the driver’s job a lot easier when the car is a dominant car,” he said. “I’ve had plenty of dominant race cars down here. And when you’re out on the race track and you have such a good car, you gain more and more confidence as the weekend goes and your confidence really starts to create more opportunities. “When you’re confident about your car, you’re trying more passes and trying to do more things. If you don’t feel confident in your car, you might second-guess a decision or not do something. Every little move you make out there sort of puts you in position to win.” Continue Online >>More fun up front - exclusive Nico Hulkenberg Q&A - formula1.com Team mate Sergio Perez may have been grabbing the headline results of late, but Nico Hulkenberg knows Force India’s upward momentum is very much on his side. Will luck swing his way in Austria this weekend? Hulkenberg certainly hopes so. One thing is for sure - the German’s staying put for 2017, and is very glad about it to boot… autobabes.com.au Q: Nico, the good news first: the VJM09 has turned into a very competitive car. The results show a real dif- ference pre- and post-Bar- celona. What has changed? Nico Hulkenberg: To be honest it is a combination of things. Let’s start with Barcelona: it is a quick, flowing track with fast, flowing corners and our car likes more low-speed corners, 90-degree angles - twisty stuff! So after Barcelona we had Mo- naco - and a podium finish. Then in Montreal we were so- so. And then Baku again with a podium finish. And Baku es- pecially suited our car and its characteristics - and on top came the supersoft and espe- cially the ultrasoft tyres - and this combination made us very competitive on these kinds of tracks. But we’ve also changed the car a lot since Barcelona - there is a clear upward slope. The momentum is clearly on our side - and that’s fun. It is so much more fun to drive and compete at the front and not at the back! (laughs) Q: That sounds like you’re pretty fond of the ultrasoft tyres. Are they a real en- richment to the 2016 tyre range? NH: They are a little bit softer, yes, but of course they are not from a different planet. It is a tyre that gives you a bit more grip - especially in qualifying on one lap. But it’s not a totally dif- ferent story. Q: But is it more fun to feel the car almost glued to the track? NH: For a driver more grip al- ways means more fun. The faster you go, the bigger our smile! (laughs) Q: Now the not-so-good news: you have not profit- ed from the improvements as much as your team mate. Why? Can you talk us through your car troubles… NH: Ha, right now it feels like the car has turned into the ‘Hulk’ and I into Bruce Banner! (laughs) Yes, lately it’s been tricky and difficult. The car has been good, yes. Take for exam- ple Monaco: the car was good, but we took a wrong decision there in my case during the race. We made a wrong call on strategy which is unfortunate, but it happens in those condi- tions. There I really could have been on the ‘steps’! Montreal was actually good. It was basi- cally Baku that has let me down. In Baku we’d already compro- mised a lot on Saturday when I spun in qualifying. That hurt our weekend pretty much and from there onward we were on the back foot - and I tak e the responsibility for that. Spin- ning in qualifying should not happen. In the race I got hit by Esteban (Gutierrez) again into Turn 1 and lost more positions and fell really far autobabes.com.auNext >