The race weekend started normally with much hard work by the Team mechanics.  The cars had not seen their Buntingford headquarters since early September and they had completed four major races since then. Last time out the Vann/Glasel car had won the Fuji 1000km race in Japan and so much re-preparation work had to be done.  Both race cars, the second one driven by Ni Amorim, Michel Ligonnet and John Hugenholtz, were back in good order for untimed practice on Friday, however.

Ni was as always very quick but the Christians were very close behind.  A broken differential and a broken roll bar plus other minor adjustments were the only problems as the cars were placed 5th and 7th in qualifying.

The race start was amazing. Pole position Kaufmann in the Freisinger Porsche spun and finished in the gravel trap.  The second ORECA Viper of Jean-Philippe Belloc and Vincent Vosse went off but somehow managed to return to the track via gravel and grass, and Ni Amorim had a huge moment which had the crowd gasping and the Team Principals looking for Insurance policies!

All however was well and the race settled down to a battle between Maassen in the Konrad Porsche, Karl Wendlinger in the lead ORECA Viper, Ni and Christian Vann in the Chamberlain cars, with the second ORECA car catching up after its indiscretion.

One of the problems with the Zhuhai Circuit is that it is very hard on fuel.  It is difficult to complete one hour on the fuel load and so all teams were trying not to have a third pit stop for fuel (a splash and dash).   Therefore, when the Safety Car was deployed firstly for some errant cars to be removed from dangerous places and then after a big accident involving two Porsches and a Lamborghini, Team Managers hoped that the slow pace would eliminate the fuel problem.   Not quite.

At the second hour, Vann was replaced by Glasel and Amorim by Hugenholz.  An exceptional stop by the car 19 pit crew saw Glasel in third place clear of his pursuers.  This soon became second when Konrad had a gear box failure on the Porsche.  Glasel kept lapping consistently and no-one was able to get near to him.  In fact he was holding off Olivier Beretta which is a feat in itself.   A second lightening stop for car 19 and Christian Vann went out with a real chance of victory.  The Beretta car had not been so fuel efficient and had to make the extra stop but, try as he might, Vann could not quite catch the already crowned Champions, a mere 17 seconds behind at the end.  Almost unnoticed, due to the tension at the front, Michel Ligonnet had an engine failure with Car 18 being a sad end to a very good race (classified though in 12th place), but the race belonged to the Christians, Car 19 and its very good pit crew.