Team Hong Kong Racing: Zhuhai ILMC Race Review

Saturday, November 13, 2010



With the car having just arrived from the British Prodrive factory, the team had only 1 week to prepare the brand new Aston Martin DBRS9 for the race. The first roll out of the car was completed thursday, just before official scrutineering and practice. "We had a huge amount of work to deal with, as the car had only just arrived from the factory. There is a lot of preparation work to complete for a 1000km race, but I am here for that and it's a good challenge for me."

During qualifying, the Swiss talent achieved third place behind the two Audis of Alex Yoong and Danny watts. "I'm quite happy with my qualifying performance, the conditions were really tricky and to be honest I couldn't have done much better. We can see that the Audis are really fast, even faster than the best GT2's! How can we fight with them with such a speed advantage? Well, 6 hours is long race, so I hope we will be able to have a trouble free race and fight for a podium."

At the start Beche managed to pass British driver Danny Watts and showed a great pace, setting the fastest time of the category. The pairing Beche/Ma proved to be very competitive in a race situation, but unfortunately had to face some real challenges which cost them some precious time : Stop and go penalty, fuel alarm defective, problem at the wheel change, brake pads change, radio interferences... But finally, thanks to their consistancy, their self-control and the right decisions by the team, the Aston N91 ended this 1000km with a superb second place finish.

Mathias BECHE
"We really deserved it ! The whole team worked so hard to get this car ready to run and nobody had any previous experience with the Aston. The mechanics, team manager, drivers, everybody was discovering the car and we can see from the result that everyone did a fantastic job. Congratulations to my teammate Philip Ma, who tested the car in wet practice sessions only and discovered how to drive it in the dry during the warm up! Unfortunately, with a very limited spare parts package, making a "perfect" set-up proved very difficult and we were on our limit everywhere with an oversteering car, which isn't ideal for a long distance endurance event like this. But Philip impressed me alot, he drove a very intelligent and solid race, avoiding all troubles and that is what we needed. Great job also by Markus Sarach (Team Manager) and thank you to Team Hong Kong and Michelin our tyre partner for this race, with whom I'm always delighted to work. The Zhuhai circuit and China mean a lot to me and it feels great to get this result here."

Philip Ma "we had a tough week putting the brand new DBRS9 GT3 on the track!" said the driver and team principal, " my team did a great job and Mathias was brilliant in qualify to put the car ahead of the audi. The race pace was good with the Aston, and a bit of luck on the track. finishing second was a great complement to us, and we are looking forward for next season."
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