Asian Porsche champions locked in for B12hr drive

VICTORY in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia Championship has locked Kiwi Chris van der Drift into a start at the 2018 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour. 

The 31-year old edged out German Martin Ragginger in a tense season finale' in Shanghai, confirming to velocitynews.co.nz that the reward would be a Bathurst start next February.

Porsche Carrera Cup Asia will enter a Porsche GT3 Cup Car in Class B, with the driving line-up comprised up of the Outright and Pro-Am class winners from this year's championship, one of the series' Porsche junior drivers and Aussie-based racer, Paul Tresidder - who has helped piece the program together.

As a result, van der Drift will join Pro-Am winner Evan Chen and Porsche China junior driver Andrew Tang in the entry.

“It’s cool to go back to Bathurst again, I always love going there,” van der Drift told velocitynews.co.nz.

“It’ll be my third time in a Cup car, so it should be good. For those guys, obviously Paul’s driven there, but for Andrew and Evan they’ve never done any laps around Bathurst so it’ll be a big learning curve for them. I’m sure they’ll be alright and I can’t wait to get back there really.”

Van der Drift, who has also raced in the Blancpain GT Asia series this year, told Velocity News that work was already underway to prepare the Bathurst rookies for the trip.

“I’m already passing them all some video. Closer to the time we’ll have to do a lot more work, but that will probably be a great help for them rather than if Marting [Ragginger] was going there. Then there would be three guys who have never been there.

“I’ve done two Bathurst 12 Hours and the Bathurst 1000, so I’ve got heaps of laps around there now, which is really good.”

Velocity News also confirmed the team would use the 991 GT3 Cup Car as raced by Tresidder in the Carrera Cup Asia this year.

- With thanks to Velocitynews.co.nz / Porsche Carrera Cup Asia.