That situation progressed into Friday Qualifying where three further red flag interruptions saw most crews complete eleven laps of the circuit – not all at full racing speed obviously and that left Yang with a late last lap lunge to claim a P13 starting slot ahead of the Sunday morning race.

A dry and warm 08:00 start to the day for the cars that did make it to the grid saw at least three cars at the tail end of the pack make early contact with one another to see bodywork flying and cars come to a smoking halt bringing out the Safety Car for the first time.

On the restart, further contact front and rear to the pack saw another three cars taken out of the race with the Safety Car again being called, still without a full racing lap having been completed but with Yang now up to P10.

Another restart and unfortunately more contact or driver error saw a further two cars facing the wrong way or in the barrier for the race to finish behind the Safety Car for a race that was never a race. Yang did manage to steal another position after that last restart to claim a P9 finish for his efforts.

Photo credits – Team / Series / social media

This weekend’s finale will again see the Stanley Yang driven #87 YIH-SVN Racing Aston Martin Racing Vantage GT4 Evo amongst the expected twenty-five strong grid for their nine-lap tour around the incredibly tight street circuit early on Sunday morning.

By our reckoning, this will be the first time a new Vantage Evo has competed at Macau.

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Proudly racing with the Motul livery aboard the #89 car, Yang suffered overheating issues within the car and cockpit last time out and was forced to retire in race two after a P9 finish in the first way back at the end of June.

Once completed at Beijing, the series will then move onto the ultimate of all street circuits at the Greater Bay Area GT race at Macau.

Photo credits – social media

With first images of the car coming out at the turn of the year, today’s news confirms that Siyuan Chen will be racing the #10 Level Motorsport entry for what will be two thirty minute plus one lap races on Saturday and Sunday.

We haven’t seen interest like this before since the heady days of the China GT Series when the BSEM AMR team ran at the front of the field with Ross Gunn and Jack Mitchell ran alongside team boss Stanley Yang.

Back into Europe and the Mirage Racing team will indeed by having double dealings back in the GT4 European Series as drivers Stanislav Safronov and Alexandr Vaintrub do back this and the FFSA GT4 series again this season.

They will join the sister car of Ruben Del Sarte and Roberto Faria who have already been confirmed.

The Comtoyou Racing team have also filled in the blanks today of their full GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup squad that will join Jessica Hawkins aboard the #270 AMR Vantage GT3 Evo.

Alexandre Leroy steps up from the GT European Series whilst Antoine Potty steps up from the GT4 European Series and into a GT3 for the first time within the Endurance Cup rounds that starts at Paul Ricard, France in just four weeks’ time.

Meanwhile and back over at Sebring in Florida, the Heart of Racing team are still hard at it after Saturday’s twelve-hour second round of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship. In between the global debut of their new FIA WEC Hypercar and this second IMSA round with their new GTP variant, the had said that they would be undertaking a 24-hour test at the circuit in order to further understand their new platform as the WEC heads to Italy next month and the IMSA Series to Long beach for their next respective rounds.

Sebring saw the Valkyrie made some serious performance enhancements with drivers Ross Gunn, Roman De Angelis and Alex Riberas behind the wheel with Tom Gamble possibly on hand at this test as well.

Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media