Augusto Farfus in the #42 Team Schnitzer M6 GT3 finished fourth in the FIA GT World Cup race on the Guia circuit on the streets of Macau on November 17. BMW DTM racer Joel Eriksson, running his first GT race in Macau, finished seventh in the #91 FIST-Team AAI M6 GT3. The overall win went to Raffaele Marciello in the #999 Mercedes-AMG GT3.
Eriksson, who had run in the Macau Formula 3 race on three occasions, started Saturday’s twelve-lap qualifying race eleventh on the seventeen-car grid, while Farfus, the 2018 winner of the race , started twelfth. Farfus moved up to eighth on the first lap, and made his way up to fourth through a pair of caution periods. Eriksson, whose car’s ABS was not working, made it up to ninth. Marciello, who had qualified first, won the Saturday race ahead of the Rowe Racing Porsche 911GT3 Rs piloted by Earl Bamber and Laurens Vanthoor.
Joel Eriksson finished seventh on his first GT race weekend in Macau.
Farfus got by Bamber for third after the lone safety car period on Sunday, but the Porsche racer was able to regain the position. Bamber went on to finish third, behind Vanthoor and race winner Marciello. Farfus was about twenty seconds behind Bamber at the finish; the M6 GT3s were over two seconds off the pace of the top three cars.
Augusto Farfus finished fourth in both the main race and the qualifying race.
Farfus, who will driver for Team Schnitzer next weekend in the nine-hour Intercontinental GT Challenge series finale in South Africa said, “There was nothing more we could have done today. We needed a good start to immediately make progress through the field. However, the Porsche drivers were clever and managed to stay in front of me. After that, it was tough for me to match the pace of the front-runners. I took a bit more of a risk at the re-start after the safety car period and was able to briefly take third place. However, I then braked a little too late coming into Lisboa, and found myself back in fourth as a result. It would have been tough to keep Earl Bamber behind me for the rest of the race anyway. If somebody had told me after the first practice sessions that we would finish fourth here, I would have taken that straight away. As it stands, we are a little disappointed now. You always want to make it onto the podium. Despite that, we can be proud of our performance. I would like to thank the whole team at BMW Team Schnitzer. We now move on to Kyalami.”—Brian Morgan
[Photos courtesy BMW Motorsport.]
