Tough weekend for China Equity AMR

The second round of the China GT Championship took place over the weekend with China Equity AMR again supporting the championship with two of their V8 Vantage GT4's entered into both Pro-Am and the Am classes.

Jack Mitchell made his second long haul flight over from the UK after his British GT exploits at Snetterton last week (and he will return home hopefully refreshed for the next round of that championship at Silverstone this weekend) to again partner Ryan Liu in their #618. Despite early errors in qualifying, the duo returned with two class podiums including a win at the first round of the championship in Zhuhai last month and hopes were there of a similar performance.


In the absence of the teams other two Vantage GT4 entries, the #619 also had a new pairing of David Pun and You Zhao who would compete in the AM-Am class with their beautiful golden liveried car.

With some interchangeable weather affecting track conditions, things certainly got off to a difficult start for the #618 crew as Liu spun whilst challenging for position but when he returned to the track the car was down on power and he lost four seconds per lap thereafter. By the time Mitchell took over  the car had also developed a power steering fault and even someone as fit as Mitchell, he could not wrestle the car around any quicker - a lowly P5 finish for them was the result for them.


With only three cars running in the Am class and with one failing to finish that obviously left the #619 crew on the podium in their first race despite finishing four laps down to the GT4 overall race winner so at least there was some reward for the team who had already worked so hard.


Race 2 faired no better for either crew as the #618 failed to take the start after a resurgence of its power stressing fault on its way to the grid leaving Liu to chase down the pack from afar, moving up to P7 by the time he handed over again to Mitchell. Running again with no power steering, Mitchell was only able to recoup two further places to end race 2 to finish in P5 again. The #619 car failed to finish in race 2.

The championship now moves on to Beijing's Goldenport Motor Park in early July.

Photo credits - China Equity AMR