Alexander Tauscher emerged as the clear winner from a bruising and stop-start fourth round of Porsche Carrera Cup Asia at Zhuhai, keeping his head in a race that rarely allowed anyone to settle into a rhythm.
The Absolute Racing driver was one of the few at the front to stay out of trouble throughout an afternoon shaped by opening-lap carnage, repeated safety cars, penalties, and investigations. While the order behind him kept shifting, Tauscher handled each restart cleanly and stayed in control to secure an important win before the championship heads to Fuji on May 9-10.
Rodrigo Dias Almeida followed him home in second after staying firmly in the fight throughout, while Marcus Amand recovered impressively to complete the podium after his race had nearly been undone at the first corner.
The biggest moment of the race came almost immediately. A concertina at Turn 1 ended in heavy contact that dragged several key runners into trouble and threw the field into instant disorder. What should have been a straightforward run into the opening sequence instead became the incident that defined the tone of the afternoon, forcing an early interruption and leaving a number of drivers on the back foot before the race had really begun.
Once racing resumed, Tauscher quickly established himself at the front and never looked likely to let the opportunity slip. The challenge was not simply speed, but managing a race that kept being broken apart. Each neutralisation reset the pressure, erased gaps, and invited more risk from those behind, but Tauscher dealt with that better than anyone else.
Amand’s recovery was one of the strongest stories in the race. After being compromised in the early melee, he fought back into contention and eventually climbed onto the podium, while Montego Maassen and Ling Kang also emerged from the disorder well to finish fourth and fifth.
Hoang Dat Sawer spent much of the race in positions higher than many might have expected at one stage, but his afternoon became increasingly difficult as the laps unfolded. Starting from ninth, he gained ground in the early chaos and spent a long stretch clinging onto a place inside the top three. It was a determined drive, and he defended hard, but the car appeared to become more difficult as the run went on. As grip faded and the balance moved away from him, he looked to be fighting the car as much as the drivers around him.
That left him vulnerable once the race finally reached its closing phase. After working hard to keep quicker cars behind for much of the contest, he eventually slipped back to sixth as the pressure intensified. Even so, he remained one of the more hard-working drivers in the field, extracting what he could from a car that did not look particularly kind to him by the end.
Elsewhere, steward intervention remained a major part of the story. Penalties and investigations continued to shape the final order, reinforcing the sense that Zhuhai was another untidy chapter for a championship that has already had its share of incidents this season. The final classification also reflected just how scrambled the race became, with class contenders able to climb unusually high overall as others ran into trouble.
John Shen emerged on top in Masters, Lu Wei took Pro-Am honours, and Tien Foo Roy Tang came away with the Am class win, the disrupted nature of the race helping open the door for standout category results as outright frontrunners dropped away or lost time.
For Tauscher, though, the message was straightforward. In a race where composure counted for more than pure aggression, he was the driver who judged it best. Zhuhai did not produce a clean contest, but it did produce a convincing winner.
| Pos | Car | Driver | Team | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 88 | Alexander Tauscher | Absolute Racing | Winner |
| 2 | 8 | Rodrigo Dias Almeida | Wetrade x Phantom Global | +0.566 |
| 3 | 3 | Marcus Amand | BWT Shanghai Yonda | +2.387 |
| 4 | 89 | Montego Maassen | Absolute Racing | +3.777 |
| 5 | 87 | Ling Kang | Origine Motorsport | +5.373 |
| 6 | 12 | Sawer Hoang Dat | Porsche Vietnam | +5.806 |
| 7 | 4 | Lu Wei | Origine Motorsport | +8.365 |
| 8 | 25 | Tien Foo Roy Tang | 610 Racing | +10.562 |
| 9 | 610 | Cao Qikuan | 610 Racing | +10.938 |
| 10 | 22 | Wang Zhongwei | Origine Motorsport | +11.532 |
| 11 | 27 | Yan Chuang | BWT x Phantom Global | +11.800 |
| 12 | 55 | Amna Al Qubaisi | Team Jebsen | +12.181 |
| 13 | 23 | Eric Kwong | Bergwerk | +12.694 |
| 14 | 7 | Bao Jinlong | Origine Motorsport | +13.137 |
| 15 | 16 | John Shen | Modena Motorsports | +14.777 |
| 16 | 61 | Adrian D Silva | EBM | +15.386 |
| 17 | 17 | Naquib Azlan | Team Porsche Malaysia | +15.519 |
| 18 | 10 | Simon Chan | Fire Monkey Motorsport | +16.192 |
| 19 | 24 | Seth Gilmore | Porsche Centre Adelaide | +16.347 |
| 20 | 33 | Jiang Jiawei | Origine Motorsport | +16.517 |
| 21 | 79 | Li Ning | Phantom Global Racing | +17.409 |
| 22 | 99 | Liu Chao | 610 Racing | +19.067 |
| 23 | 65 | Douglas Khoo | Viper Niza Racing | +21.775 |
| 24 | 69 | Dominic Tjia | OpenRoad Racing | +22.304 |
| 25 | 77 | Liu Ruiqi | Phantom Global Racing | +33.306 |
| 26 | 11 | Joshua Berry | EBM | DNF |
| 27 | 21 | Lu Zhiwei | OpenRoad Racing | DNF |
| 28 | 969 | Jacky Wu | Porsche Own Retail 69 Team | DNF |
| 29 | 66 | Marco Giltrap | Team Porsche New Zealand | DNF |
| 30 | 91 | Henry Kwong | Bergwerk | DNF |
