SEANGP.com (Jakarta) - Anthony Liu returned to victory lane for the first time since 2024 in the second of this weekend’s GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS races at Mandalika.

The Phantom Global Porsche he shared with series debutant Loek Hartog claimed a regulation lights-to-flag win from championship leaders Huang Ruohan and Alessandro Ghiretti (Absolute Racing) who battled through from seventh on the grid, while Andrés Pato stood on his home podium for the second time this weekend alongside Audi Sport Asia Team Phantom co-driver Jaxon Evans.

Race 2’s result completed Phantom’s excellent outing in Indonesia after its R8s finished one-two on Saturday. Liu, meanwhile, joins his compatriot Lu Wei on seven overall wins – the most of any driver in championship history.

The result leaves Liu nine points behind this year’s early pace setters Huang and Ghiretti who added a second place to the first, third and fourth positions collected over the opening three races.

Silver honours went to Akash Nandy (Absolute Racing) who finished an excellent fourth overall after benefitting from Liu Kaishun and Andy Deng’s drive-through, Dean Chen and Liang Jiatong (Craft-Bamboo) claimed their second Silver-Am victory of the weekend after GTO with KRC’s BMW was pinged for a short pitstop, and AMAC’s Andrew Macpherson and Ben Porter scored maximum Am points following a late drive-through for Setiawan Santoso and Zhou Bi Huang.

Sixth overall was also enough for Chen and Jiatong to scoop China Cup top spot.

For the winners, Mandalika’s second race was a comparatively simple affair. Hartog led Evans away from pole but was never troubled before pitting with a 2.7s lead over the Audi, which had an additional 10 seconds to serve for finishing runner-up on Saturday.

Liu therefore exited the pits with a comfortable advantage over Lu Wei, whose co-driver Alessio Picariello vaulted to third from eighth at the start, Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak and Huang. The subsequent squabble involving that trio helped Phantom’s 911 pull further clear en route to a 16-second victory.

Huang’s route to second place involved passing his Absolute team-mate at the end of a Full Course Yellow period and a thrilling battle with Lu that began at the start/finish straight and was finally resolved at Turn 12 where a compromised line saw Origine’s 911 then come under attack from Inthraphuvasak. The Thai driver misjudged his braking into the penultimate corner, however, causing a collision that spun him around.

Lu continued in fourth place behind Pato before a track limits drive-through penalty added insult to injury. He and Picariello ultimately finished ninth.

Their pain was Nandy’s gain. As a solo driver, the Malaysian had to serve an additional seven seconds during his pitstop but quickly made up the time when racing against the Ams. He was up to sixth overall by the final lap before finishing two places higher by passing Tony Ruan’s KRC BMW at the penultimate corner and inheriting another place from Inthraphuvasak once his five-second post-race penalty for hitting Lu was applied.

Ruan and Jesse Krohn also benefitted from that, along with Craft Bamboo’s Silver-Am winners Chen and Liang who enjoyed another strong race en route to sixth.

Winhere Hamony’s Deng and Yi battled back from their drive-through to finish eighth overall and second in Silver-Am. That class podium was completed by 5ZIGEN’s Nissan, which rounded out the top 10 despite starting from the back row following gearbox issues in qualifying and Takayuki Aoki’s lurid spin during the race.

But there was no fairytale ending to Sean Gelael’s one-off outing on home soil after the Indonesian finished third overall yesterday. Instead, his Garage 75 Ferrari triggered an early Safety Car period when it hit Adderly Fong’s Harmony 296 and became beached in the gravel. Fong and Sun Jingzu fought back from their car’s resulting spin to finish second in Silver-Am.

SRO Asia’s continent-wide activities continue next weekend in Zhuhai with rounds three and four of China’s domestic GT4 championship, the SRO GT Cup, before Sugo kickstarts Japan Cup’s multi-class campaign seven days later. GT World Asia, meanwhile, returns to action at Shanghai on June 5/6 when its two one-hour races are split across Friday and Saturday due to national exams. (gt-world-challenge-asia/arl/wto)