Brendon Leitch charged from 17th to the Pro-Am podium on the streets of Beijing — and did it the hard way.
The Southland driver and Harmony Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 EVO co-driver Jiajun Song claimed their second Pro-Am class podium of the GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS season in Race 1, after a recovery drive that turned a near-disaster into a result.
Song ran into trouble early. A crash in Saturday morning pre-qualifying left the car needing urgent repairs, with Harmony Racing finishing the fix just minutes before qualifying. Then a technical issue during the race itself bled nearly two minutes off their time. A timely Safety Car let Leitch slot back into the queue after the pit stop sequence, and he pounced.
One lap. Five positions. By the flag he was third in class, eighth overall.
"Talk about a rollercoaster day," Leitch said. "JJ has really been pushing himself to be better and unfortunately pushed a little too hard on Saturday morning in pre-qualifying and unfortunately crashed the car. Harmony Racing did an amazing job to have it fixed with just a few minutes to go before we rolled out for qualifying."
On the Safety Car luck: "An unusual technical gremlin crept in during Saturday afternoon's race that cost us a bunch of time so we were a bit lucky with the Safety Car. It was a bit like playing Gran Turismo on easy mode just passing cars. We had a lot of speed and that showed it. We probably could have got more but once we got to the Pro-Am podium we went into low-risk mode."
Their second podium of the season — the first came at Mandalika in Indonesia earlier in the year.
Sunday looked even more promising. Leitch qualified third and made his best start of the season, slicing into the lead within the first few turns. He controlled the race through to the mid-race pit stops, handing over to Song with a useful gap in hand.
Then it unravelled. Song lost ground against more experienced co-drivers, a second Safety Car wiped out the buffer Leitch had built, and a restart infringement added a 10-second penalty that pushed them out of podium contention altogether.
"I don't think I could have done much more on Sunday, to be honest. I started third and passed the two cars in front of me and then it was ours to lose from there," Leitch said. "You need a lot to go your way to win these races. The difference between the professional drivers is small but the gap from amateur to amateur is a lot bigger, and unfortunately the more experienced guys were just too good. Without the Safety Car, we probably could have held on for a class podium. It wasn't to be, but that's racing. We couldn't finish the job on Sunday but to come away with a podium on Saturday feels like a win because we've come close so many times this season."
Leitch has already returned to Sydney, turning his attention to a Dunlop Super2 Series debut with Team Kiwi Racing at the Repco Bathurst 1000 weekend.