Mixed fortunes at Fuji for Clearwater Racing

What a race of mixed fortunes at Fuji 🇯🇵 We started from Pole Position in GTE AM, beautifully won by Matt Griffin but especially by Team Principal Weng Sun Mok who gave us the P1 with a superb lap in terrible conditions.

Race day weather was predictably foul and Sawa San started the race for us under the Safety Car. Once the race proper started, the amazing Keita got the #61 Ferrari as high up as 20th overall, ahead of 3 cars in the GTE PRO class!!! But, an untimely Safety Car period decimated our lead which was over a minute from P2 at that point. Then Weng got into the car did a few laps and the race was Red Flagged due to fog on the track. Once it resumed, Weng put in a brilliant stint to lead the class by 13 seconds, the fastest Bronze driver on the track, faster even than a silver in the GTE AM field!! And then, disaster struck when 20 seconds from finishing his mandatory minimum driving time, a Safety Car was called for no immediate apparent reason....thus Weng had to pit and splash for fuel as the pits wouldn't be open for pit stops for another four laps. When Weng did eventually pit, Matt was able to resume the race in P4 and work his way up to P2, just 1.9 seconds behind the leading #54 Ferrari. And then another Safety Car was called for an LMP2 accident followed by a Red Flag for fog on the track......😡 The race was never restarted and when the results were declared, we finished in P2. We'd like to congratulate our good mates from Spirit Of Race / Vista Jet Ferrari - Thomas Flohr, Francesco Castelacchi and Miguel Molina on a superb maiden win in the WEC. It's not all doom and gloom, well hardly, as we were able to accomplish our Mission for the weekend which was to retake the lead in the GTE AM Championship!! There's 2 races to go all still to play for...bring on Shanghai! 

Article by Arj Pillay Kulasegaram 

Image from Dailysportscar