Brazilian Augusto Farfus claimed a commanding FIA GT World Cup victory as BMW scored its first triumph in the much-coveted contest.

Long-time BMW Schnitzer boss, Charly Lamm, was overseeing his final major race before stepping down at the end of the year, so it proved to be a popular and emotional win for the German marque.

Farfus controlled the race from pole position despite coming under pressure from a trio of Mercedes-AMG GT3s.

Three Mercedes’ became two on lap seven, however, when Raffaele Marciello’s chances of victory were blown at Lisboa. The talented Italian seemed to out-brake himself at the infamous turn and nudged slowly into the barrier, which saw him drop to the rear of the field.

So it was down to Marciello’s Mercedes-AMG Team GruppeM Racing team-mates – Maro Engel and Edoardo Mortara – to harass the BMW M6 GT3 ahead of them. The duo kept Farfus honest for the remainder of the race, but the BMW Team Schnitzer man held on for his maiden FIA GT World Cup success.

Engel and Mortara completed the podium, whilst the racey Porsche of Earl Bamber was arguably unlucky not to reach the rostrum. Things could have been worse for the New Zealander, however, after his car survived contact with the barrier early on.

The Audi Sport duo of Robin Frijns and Christopher Haase finished fifth and sixth respectively, whilst Craft Bamboo Racing Mathieu Jaminet followed them home.

Three different manufacturers occupied the final top ten positions with Dries Vanthoor (Audi), the recovering Marciello (Mercedes) and Alexandre Emmanuel Imperatori (Nismo) completing the top order.

Augusto Farfus said: “This is a fantastic victory. It is 29 years to the day that my dad gave me my first motorcycle and to be here now winning the FIA GT World Cup is a very special moment. It’s all the more special because Charly (Lamm) is here. We brought a small team to Macau but everyone here for BMW Motorsport has done a fantastic job. We had a plan and I think we executed it perfectly. I think it’s the first time the GT has had a full green race as well. I knew I had the pace, I knew I had the package and that the start would be crucial for a good race. So, a lot of effort when into turn one; I wanted to keep the lead and that was pretty much it. I was just committed, fully committed to keeping my car on the track. In the last sector I got a good run on to the straight and we made it! It’s our first GT World Cup, I want to thank BMW Motorsport, all the BMW family, the media, the marketing, all of the engineers who worked on the car and made this possible, also to Shell for being our partner. It’s now time to celebrate, it’s our first World Cup and there’s no better time to finish the season than with a victory."
 
Maro Engel said: "I tried absolutely everything, pushing really hard and putting him under pressure, obviously I was closing in up the mountain a lot. Pushing like hell there, but I just couldn’t get close enough anywhere you could overtake; on the mountain it’s obviously difficult. On the last sector he made a gap, then on the first sector an even bigger gap. So, there was no thinking about overtaking, even at Lisboa, which is the prime overtaking spot. But, congrats to them, a big thank you to Mercedes-AMG and GruppeM for giving me an awesome AMG-GT3 today; we pushed really hard, we were quicker, but overtaking was just not possible."
 
Edoardo Mortara said: "Long and difficult race, definitely. I was chasing the cars in front but couldn’t do anything because they were too quick. I guess for me it was a little bit damage limitation this year, I didn’t really feel like I had the possibility to do better. It’s a bit like this sometimes but you have to extract everything that you have left, always."

Click here to download the final classification.