Liqui Moly Team Engstler’s Luca Engstler extended his standings lead over teammate Mitchell Cheah with victory in the opening TCR Asia contest at the Shanghai International Circuit.
The reigning TCR Middle East champion and 2018 TCR Germany vice-champion took the lead on the second lap from polesitter Henry Ho’s Honda Civic Type R FK8 and was not eclipsed.
Teammate Cheah followed him home one second adrift at the line for a Liqui Moly Team Engstler 1-2-3 with Diego Moran completing the podium in third, albeit seven seconds back from the leading pair.
This extended the outfit’s stranglehold on the Teams’ title in their bid for a third consecutive Drivers’ and Teams’ Championship.
In the opening laps of the race, Moran had been running behind TCR China points leader Ho before his teammates passed him and he dropped to third.
Next was Eurico De Jesus in fourth; the highest-placed TCR China finisher with Sunny Wong’s TeamWork Motorsport Volkswagen rounding out the top five ahead of fellow Golf runner Li Xue Feng.
Maximum Racing’s Ivan Szeto was the Asia Cup victor in seventh ahead of Kevin Lam in eighth with Douglas Khoo in the first of the CUPRA entries, and second in the Asia Cup.
Completing the top ten was Miguel Kong in the second of the MacPro Racing Hondas, while TCR Cup leader KK Wong finished five laps down in his Elegant Racing Team CUPRA.
Race result
| POS | NO | DRIVER | NAT | ENTRANT | CAR | LAPS | TIME | BEST | GD |
| 1 | 108 | Luca ENGSTLER |  |
Liqui Moly Team Engstler | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 12 | 31:37.259 | 2:17.825 | 2 |
| 2 | 29 | Mitchell CHEAH Min Jie |  |
Liqui Moly Team Engstler | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 12 | TBC | 2:17.557 | 1 |
| 3 | 32 | Diego MORAN |  |
Liqui Moly Team Engstler | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 12 | TBC | 2:18.716 | 3 |
| 4 | 88 | Eurico DE JESUS |  |
MacPro Racing | Honda Civic Type R FK7 TCR | 12 | TBC | 2:18.049 | 6 |
| 5 | 28 | Ryan WONG | |
TA Motorsport | Audi RS3 LMS TCR | 12 | TBC | 2:18.876 | 7 |
| 6 | 68 | XUE Li |  |
Liqui Moly HE Racing | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 12 | TBC | 2:20.936 | 10 |
| 7 | 22 | Ivan SZETO Wing Shun |  |
Maximum Racing | Honda Civic TCR 2016 | 12 | TBC | 2:23.250 | 9 |
| 8 | 6 | Wai LAM | |
Son Veng Racing | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 11 | + 1 LAP | 2:22.579 | 13 |
| 9 | 65 | Douglas KHOO Kok Hui | |
Viper Niza Racing | SEAT León TCR SEQ V3 | 11 | + 1 LAP | 2:24.911 | 8 |
| 10 | 8 | Kin KONG | |
MacPro Racing | Honda Civic Type R FK7 TCR | 11 | + 1 LAP | 2:26.247 | 11 |
| R | 33 | Kelvin WONG Kiang Kuan | |
Elegant Racing Team | SEAT León TCR SEQ V2 | 8 | DNF | 2:25.399 | 5 |
| R | 60 | CHEN Zhen | |
Hexin Racing | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 6 | DNF | 2:26.152 | 12 |
| R | 11 | Alex HUI Ka Tai | |
Teamwork BrandNew Racing | Volkswagen Golf GTi TCR | 3 | DNF | 3:15.943 | 4 |
| R | 3 | Alex LIU Lic Ka | |
Elegant Racing Team | SEAT León TCR SEQ V2 | 0 | DNF | N/A | 14 |