Kessel Racing is pleased to announce its return to the Asian Le Mans Series for the 2024/2025 season with two Ferrari 296 GT3. The two-car entry will celebrate its premiere in the championship after the team had previously raced with the Ferrari 488 GT3. The #57 Car Guy Ferrari will see Yudai Uchida, Esteban Masson and Daniel Serra behind the wheel, with Takeshi Kimura joining the team for the second and third round. Dustin Blattner and Dennis Marschall, the third place Bronze champions of the GT World Challenge Sprint Cup, will be joined by Ben Tuck to race in the #74 Kessel Ferrari.
In just over two weeks, the Asian Le Mans Series will get underway for the first two 4-hour races, taking place at the 5.5-kilometre-long Sepang International Circuit and the visit to Malaysia will mark the championships 10th anniversary. Kessel Racing first entered the championship in the 2018/2019 season and promptly won the Championship in GT. In the following season, the team narrowly missed out on a consecutive title win and became Runner-up. The last three seasons did not bring the hoped results, however, with a strong European season under its belt, the team is keen to achieve top results in Asia.
Takeshi Kimura will miss out on the first round due to personal reasons and will be back for round two and three. The experienced Japanese driver Yudai Uchidad, who has raced in the Ferrari Challenge and in the Super GT Series, is the third driver alongside Esteban Masson and Daniel Serra – the vice champions in ELMS. Dustin Blattner and Dennis Marschall, who took two victories and three podiums in the Bronze Cup in the GT World Challenge Sprint Cup this year, will take behind the wheel of the #74 Ferrari alongside Ben Tuck, who has raced with Kessel Racing in the Endurance Cup.
A tight schedule is awaiting the Swiss-based team with one qualifying session on Saturday morning and one 4-hour race on both Saturday and Sunday. With an entry of 45 cars for the opening two races and 28 cars alone in the GT-category, the weekend of Sepang promises to be full of on-track action.
The first and second round will take place at Sepang (Malaysia) from 5th until 8th December 2024. All sessions can be watched and followed live on https://live.asianlemansseries.com/en/. The local time is GMT+8.
Timetable Round 1 Sepang
Thursday, 5th December 2024
13:00 – 15:00 Private Test Session 1
16:30 – 18:00 Private Test Session 2
Friday, 6th December 2024
13:00 – 14:30 Free Practice 1
16:00 – 17:30 Free Practice 2
Saturday, 7th December 2024
09:50 – 10:05 Qualifying GT
14:00 – 18:00 Asian Le Mans Series – Race 1
Sunday, 8th December 2024
10:30 – 10:45 Warm-up
14:00 – 18:00 Asian Le Mans Series – Race 2