GT3 / 25 September 2023
NSX GT3 Evo 22 teams show fighting spirit on tough weekend
NSX GT3 Evo 22 customer racing teams again showed their hard-charging spirit across a pair of bruising events on either side of the Atlantic Ocean during the weekend.
Le Mans Cup
GMB Motorsport appeared to have scored their first GT3 win of the season at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps circuit, only to see their dream result cruelly snatched away.
Thomas Andersen qualified a season's-best third for the 2022 Championship-winning team and took advantage of a handily-timed mid-race safety car to hand over driving duties to Simon Birch.
Birch then fended off several challenges from behind to win with the top six covered by just five seconds, only for the #55 machine be penalised 10 seconds post-race for not slowing down enough behind the safety car.
The change to the result promoted the sister #88, driven by Lars Pedersen and Jan Magnussen, to fourth place - their best result of the season.
GT World Challenge America
Ashton Harrison and Mario Farnbacher's title hopes in the Pro class were dealt a blow when a suspected drive-line issue put their Racers Edge with WTR Andretti NSX out of the second race at Sebring while Farnbacher lay second during the early stages.
Twenty-four hours earlier Harrison had run well in fourth throughout the opening stint before Farnbacher took over, caught and passed the #93 crew's key title rivals, only to be spun off by them several corners later with 10 of the 90 minutes to run.
His assailant was penalised post-race, elevating the NSX to fourth. Harrison and Farnbacher are third in the standings but still in with a chance of adding to their 2022 Pro-Am title at the double-points Indy 8 Hour next month.
All three cars were competing as part of the NSX GT3 Customer Racing Programme; a global collaborative project with JAS Motorsport responsible for assembly of all cars.
Honda Performance Development (HPD) and M-TEC handle sales and technical support in North America and Japan respectively, with JAS responsible for these areas across the rest of the world.