Sunny Wong and Alex Hui win the final race of the 2018 season at Guangdong
Sunny Wong and Alex Hui followed up on Hui’s sprint race victory earlier in the day with their fifth endurance race victory of the season at the Guangdong International Circuit, having already secured the drivers’ championship title earlier in the day.
Alex Hui started the Teamwork Motorsport Volkswagen Golf GTI TCR from second on the grid and quickly passed the rival Volkswagen of Li Ke Ling into Turn 1, while Li Shi Cheng was up to second in the Leo Racing Volkswagen, with Ma Qing Hua third in the Freely Alfa Romeo Giulietta TCR.
Ma had the pace and quickly passed Li’s Volkswagen for second at Turn 1 on lap three, and began closing down the small lead that Hui had built.
Ma made his move on lap seven at Turn 1 again to take the lead from Hui, but the Hong Kong driver had taken back the spot before the end of the lap after a mistake from Ma. Meanwhile, the HE Racing Volkswagen of Tian Li Ying ground to a halt from fourth and stopped on the back straight.
It was on lap nine that Ma Qing Hua retook the lead from Hui, making his way past as they were lapping traffic, and began to build a lead in the Giulietta TCR.
Li Shi Cheng was the first of the top three drivers to pit during the mandatory pit stop window, with Hui coming in a lap later to hand the Teamwork Motorsport car to Sunny Wong, while Ma Qing Hua left it to the last possible moment to stop to let Xia Yi Li take over the Alfa Romeo, with a 25 second lead now having been built up.
The race was soon over for Freely Racing, as Xia locked up as he came to Turn 1 for the first time on cold tyres and slid into the gravel, with Sunny Wong handed an easy path to victory.
Wong just had to keep it on track for his stint, as he built a 30 second margin to Li Lin’s HE Racing Volkswagen to complete a perfect result for Teamwork Motorsport in the endurance events of the 2018 TCR China Touring Car Championship season, with their fifth win from five.
Li finished second, with the repaired TA Motorsport Audi RS 3 LMS of Falco Lau and Gary Lo, which had stopped in the first race and missed the second, finishing third, one lap down.
The additional 18 points for Wong and Hui mean they have won the drivers’ championship by 30 points over the MacPro Honda pair of Henry Ho and Eurico de Jesus.
