Pictures courtesy of Jayson. More to come!!
Here's a short story written by Richard on how the entire week went. Enjoy!
A week’s worth of exhausting practice, fine tuning, team discussions, hammering out strategies and then more practice finally came to a head on Qualifying day. At this juncture every team was out in full force. A strong sense of occasion filled the air with a heavy tone of competition. If by this time, you hadn’t already fully grasped the magnitude of this race, there was no denying it now.
Qualifying day’s itinerary also saw 2 legs of the Asian Super Car Challenge. This was sizing up to be one of those days petrolheads live for.
Qualifying proper was segmented into 3 blocks. Naturally each block was for one driver. Class C and B would qualify in the first half hour and after a 10 minute break, classes A and O and would have their half hour session. This concluded the first block, ten minutes after the second block would commence. Teams finally would be ranked on the average timing of the 3 drivers to determine their starting grid position.
As H-hour drew nearer, tensions mounted. All along the pit lane, teams checked, tested and then re-checked their cars to be sure they hadn’t overlooked any detail. MME 2008 received over a hundred entries but with only 77 spots on the starting grid, qualifying day was going to spell a bitter end to the week for some teams.
As for Team Choon’s, everybody was on his or her ‘A’ game. The car had performed well all week, all 3 drivers were comfortable with the setup, the team was confident and we believed we had the pace to qualify. The order in which the drivers were going to qualify was Kenneth, then Kevin and finally Luke. The strategy for qualifying was simple, get out on track, warm up the car, do a flying lap and then pit. From the marquee, team strategist Raph Chua would utilize the complete video coverage of Sepang at his disposal to orchestrate the best outcome by advising the driver when to speed up or slow to allow them a clear piece of track ahead during their flying lap.
Not a moment too soon, the time came for Kenneth to hop into the hot seat and put the car through its paces for Q1 arrived. Class C and Class B’s hopeful’s lined up in the pit lane eagerly. After his warm up lap, the anxiety pushed the car slightly off balance, and it spun on what would be the first flying lap. Kenneth got his head back in the game quickly, and went around for another warm up lap. Through the comms, Raph offered a few last words of advice in a bid to calm everyone’s nerves. In the same shade of resilience that Kenneth had shown all week, he came back strong on his first flying lap to bring home a timing of 2 minutes 40.9 seconds, well within the pace everyone was hoping for. For the first time this week, Choon’s racing, the new boy to MME had officially proven that we had the pace to give even the most veteran of teams a run for their money.
As Q1 came to an end, Kenneth was greeted to a barrage of pats on the back and well wishes. The marquee provided an escape from the roar of Class A and O’s qualifying session. Kenneth’s timing had placed us within the qualifying cut-off but the war was not won yet. We were unaware of strategies that other teams would employ. We could only do our best and hope that this pace would hold it’s ground. The deafening symphony of the Class A and O’s qualifying quietened down, signaling the beginning of our Q2. In Q1 we had drawn first blood and now there was no way to back down. Kevin stepped up to the challenge and Q2 was on its way. In the marquee, “live” timings were fed to a TV screen at the end of each lap. It showed a standings table sorted by timing. Eager eyes were glued to the screen while out on track, Kevin had just finished his warm up lap and begun his flying lap. Raph had expertly negotiated Kevin a open piece of track by almost slowing to crawling speed to allow other cars to pass. That accomplished, Kevin could now put down the power without a worry. And he did just that, blazing across the line with a timing of 2 minutes 40 seconds. A cool down lap followed by another flying lap harvested the same result. Q2 drew to an end and Kevin was greeted with the same pats on the back and well wishes. Kevin and Kenneth’s average timing had us still planted within the green.
Time between qualifying sessions seemed to shrink as Luke donned his racing suit and prepared to head out. Along with Q3 came the fear that perhaps other teams had all decided to field their fastest driver in the last stint. If this was the case, all our hard work in the first 2 sessions could be relegated by an onslaught of quick timings from the other teams. Through the weeklong practice sessions, we had noted that other Class C teams did have the potential pace to pull that out of their hats. In any case, the talking was going to be done on the track. Luke had set the pace all week and if there was one driver who could hold his own among the quickest, it was going to be him. With the warm up lap quickly dispensed with, Luke gave the little civic all it could take crossing the line in a blistering 2 minutes 38 seconds, cementing a position on the starting grid on race day. Choon’s had successfully qualified 5th in Class C, 7th overall for Class B and C and 44th Overall!
The post-qualifying atmosphere session housed mixed emotions as some teams celebrated while the others had to clear the pit by 1800hrs. Team Choon’s spent the rest of the afternoon checking the car, looking to replace any worn out parts before race day. Only the engine remained untouched as regulations specify that engine used in qualifying must start the race.
As night fell, the pit lane came to life again as all the teams began practicing their pit stops. As with any motor sport event, every second in the race counts and as such teams strive to make their pit stops as efficient as possible. During an endurance race like this one, quick driver changes during pit stops are crucial to any race strategy. As a new team to this race, Team Choon’s learnt first hand how tedious these pit stops can be. We practiced late into the night, coming up with the best routine through trial and error. After laboriously practicing, sufficient pit stop synergy was achieved and we called it a night and returned to rest before the big day.
There was no denying the excitement, nervousness and anxiety on the morning of race day. As usual the team arrived and set up the marquee by 9am and almost immediately began entertaining guests, sponsors, friends and family members. The paddock area was a flurry of motorsport and automotive big wigs who had come to show their support and mingle. The Classic Car and Petronas Formula BMW support races ensured that there was no shortage of activity pre-race. 11am rolled in and the cars rolled out of the pits. After a quick formation lap, they lined up according to their qualifying position on the grid with Team Porsche Club Singapore leading the pack of 77 cars. Smack in the middle of the line up was the ruby red Choon’s eg6. The race proper didn’t flag off till 1145am, which left a lot of time for last minute pictures to be taken and everyone to get in position to watch the start of the race. Just before race start, everyone was ordered to clear the track and Luke was strapped in. At 1145 sharp (Sepang official time), the cars came to life and rolled off their grid marking for the warm up lap. The race would officially start when the first car crossed the start / finish line. The ground rumbled as the roar of 77 cars thundered down the back straight and around turn 15 and tore down the front straight to start the 12-hour race.
By the second lap the drama had already picked up with Team Choon’s given a drive-through penalty for allegedly crossing the start/finish line one position ahead of it’s grid position. It was still too early in the race for a set back this small to be pivotal to the outcome and the team’s nerves remained cool. Luke was now well settled into his race pace of 2 minutes 45 seconds, which was as quick as the fastest cars in Class C. With his stint of 75 minutes over, he pulled into the pits for the first driver change. Kevin was next in the hot seat. After a tire change and refueling, he was out of the pits. All of the cars had by now settled into their own race pace and the field was quite spread out albeit the faster Class O cars had as much as a thirty second lead over the Class B and C cars which meant they were regularly overtaking them. Kevin managed to find his comfort zone within the class C cars and almost immediately converted it into consistently quick lap times of 2 minutes 41 seconds. This slightly worried team strategist Raph Chua whose main concern was reliability not competition. It was still early in the race but there were already casualties in the form of other teams who were forced to pit to replace or repair damaged parts but so far there were no retirees.
The race was coasting along perfectly until Team Choon’s was given its first shakedown. Toward the 40-minute mark in Kevin’s first stint, he radioed the pit to inform them that he had a problem and was coming in with what could be a possible driveshaft failure. Team director Eddie Ng and the pit crew swung into action and had all the necessary parts and tools in place well before Kevin entered. Before the car could come to a complete standstill in the pit, the pit crew was already all over the car. With an almost superhuman speed, they removed the faulty driveshaft and replaced it with a new one. Kevin was back in the car and out on track again inside of 15 minutes to complete the rest of his stint.
20 minutes passed as Kevin carefully brought the car back up to his race pace before he had to pit in to hand over the helm to the third driver, Kenneth. Kenneth had almost no problems finding a consistent and conservative race pace of 2 minutes 43 seconds. By now, with all of the initial hustle and bustle of the race start gone, the entire field had slowed down their pace. The grueling 15 corners of Sepang had already claimed victims in the form of a retired and a disqualified team. Once again, routine was setting in when Kenneth pulled into the pit. He too was complaining of a driveshaft problem. Repeating the earlier process, Eddie and his pit crew went into overdrive, this time changing both the front driveshafts on the car and quickly checking the surrounding parts for any potential damage. After Eddie had deduced that problem was originating from the driveshaft and not somewhere else, Luke hopped into the car to begin his second stint. The motive of the team after 2 unscheduled pit stops had changed drastically from claiming places to keeping the car intact and finishing the race. The first five hours of the race was visibly taking its tolls on the cars as more and more teams were making unscheduled pit stops. There was now more than one unfortunate team that had no choice but to retire. Luke was doing his best to relieve the stress on the driveshafts by following Eddie’s advice to reduce the amount of steering input but alas, the driveshaft gave way yet again. The driveshaft changing procedure repeated itself again. On the faces of the team members hung desperate looks as the hope of finishing the race dwindled. If the reliability of the driveshafts continued this way, it was only a matter of time before other problems would arise. Perhaps maybe even problems the pit crew couldn’t fix. With slightly more than 6 hours left to go, the drivers would have to do their utmost to carefully bring the car across the finish line.
After 4 broken driveshafts, Team Choon’s had lost an estimated 20 laps on the Class C leaders and clawing back those laps involved taking risks that were too great. The scorching Malaysian afternoon slowly gave way to a less harsh sunset while miraculously on the track the little EG6 was going strong. Since the last driveshaft change, nothing else had gone wrong but everyone still had their fingers crossed. Soon, it would be nightfall and it would bring along with it a whole new set of challenges.
By 7.30pm the sky was completely dark. Still, more than 60 cars were lapping Sepang decked out with their night driving equipment that included HID head and fog lights. Some teams placed strips of coloured LEDs on the front of the car to easier identify them as they roared pass the pit wall. Team Choon’s EG had a distinctive set of yellow-tinted headlights and white fog lights along with a vertical row of blue LEDs on the left of the windscreen. In the marquee, the driver’s took turns to rest while waiting for their next stint while the marquee crew laboriously followed the car through all of the 15 turns by browsing the live-feed channels from the cameras around the track. Along the pit wall, the timing crew was still manually timing each lap time and displaying the pit board for the driver’s reference. The pit crew waited in the pit area, hoping they wouldn’t be called to action until the next scheduled pit stop. Fatigue was definitely setting in amongst the team but everyone remained vigilant. All throughout the week, we had learned that a race team is only as strong as it’s members and seeing more and more teams being forced to pit with problems or worse still, having to retire served as a grim reminder of the outcome of a concentration lapse.
After having soldiered on for almost 11 hours, the victory of completion was within sight for Team Choon’s. Unfazed by our upward shift on the leader board, we had managed to keep our head’s cool. Smooth pit stops by the pit crew, careful planning by the marquee personnel, constant feedback from the pit wall and conscientious driving from the three drivers had brought us this far and now we all had to do was finish. Due to the unscheduled pit stops earlier in the day, the original strategy had to be modified and as such, Luke had to enter the car for a fourth time to complete the last hour of the race. Kevin pitted with less than the 75 minutes left on the clock and handed the baton to Luke in the hope that the next time we saw him, it would be when he crossed the finish line. Even this late in the race, there were still victims being claimed. Up and down the paddock, word spread about teams that had retired with less than an hour left.
The minutes seemed to pass by slower and slower and everytime the EG 6 disappeared from the pit wall’s view around turn 1, our heartbeats raised until it reappeared again through turn 15. With 20 minutes left to go, Luke slowed his pace down by almost 20 second to relieve all unnecessary stress from the car. The moment was now almost upon us. Every member of the remaining teams crowded the pit walls as the first car crossed the finish line to take the chequered flag, signaling the end of the race. Almost a minute passed before the familiar sight of the yellow and white HID lights appeared from around turn 15 and the Team Choon’s EG 6 crossed the finish line. The team was overflowing with ecstasy and cheered wildly as the car passed. The little civic had survived the 12 hour ordeal. Finishing 8th in class and 38th overall. All the cars pitted on the next lap and Team Choon’s members, , family members, friends and supporters surrounded the car as it came to a stop and Luke climbed out. Cameras flashed, sighs of relief were heaved, hugs were exchanged and it was proven beyond any doubt that victory is indeed a team sport.
