ANOTHER WIN FOR TIM IN INDONESIA

Tim Sugden scored his fourth win of the season in round 5 of Asian Porsche Carrera Cup at Sentul, near Jakarta in Indonesia on Sunday.    He made the 15,000 mile round trip to the Southern Pacific to take part in rounds 5 and 6 of the championship for GruppeM racing.   In the first race he took the lead on the last corner of the last lap from Keita Sawa, Japanese Formula 3 Champion, who had led from pole position.

In qualifying Sugden put the car on grid 2 less that 2 tenths of a second slower that Sawa after making a slight mistake on his best lap on new tyres and so Sawa had track advantage at the start.    Throughout the race Sugden was close to Sawa’s bumper in their identical Porsche GT3 Cup cars and as Sawa went very defensive for the final corner Sugden was able to take a wider line and greater exit speed to win by 0.2 seconds and maintain his championship lead.

The grid for race 6 is decided by the results of race 5 and so Sugden started from pole this time but a close battle at the first corner between him, Sawa and Australian Christian Jones saw Sawa gain the advantage again.   As the race progressed Sawa was holding Sugden and Jones up and so battles at most corners were the order of the day.    In one of these Sawa side swiped Tim’s car causing two punctures and although the team was able to change both wheels Sugden could only finish a lap down in 8th place.    Jones went on to win with Sawa second and Hong Kong based Marchy Lee third

The points system for this series favours consistency and so a win and 8th place against the 2 second places by Sawa gives Sawa the lead in the championship despite the fact that he has 1 race win to Tim ’s 4 in the series.    The series continues at Chengdu in China on September 15/16