07 August 2010, BY Sepang International Circuits
While admitting that they have a mountainous task lying ahead of them in defending their Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race (MMER) crown, the PETRONAS Syntium Team has defiantly declared that they will fight to keep the overall title.
Tatsuya Kataoka, who won the title last year with Manibu Orido and Malaysian youngster Johan Adzmi, pointed that their poor results in qualifying yesterday would not be an indication of the team’s overall performance for the actual race.
“This is a long endurance race. It’s not a sprint race and it’s not about out and out speed,” said Kataoka, who will be driving the #1 PETRONAS Syntium Team BMW Z4M Coupe with Fariqe Hairuman and Melvin Moh this year.
The team will start from the 13th position on the grid, right behind the other PETRONAS Syntium car, driven by Nobuteru Taniguchi, Masataka Yanagida and Imran Zaharias Shaharom.
The race will be flagged off at the stroke of midnight today by Youth and Sports Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek and witnessed by Miss Malaysia World Thanuja Ananthan. The 11th edition of the MMER will end at noon tomorrow.
First on the starting grid will be the Porsche Club Singapore Racing trio, Mok Weng Sun, Craig Baird and Richard Lietz. The team was the overall winner in 2008. Last year, they had finished third behind the two PETRONAS Syntium Team race cars.
Kataoka said: “We knew it was going to be difficult to get the pole position. We had to struggle with the tyre performance as we were suffering from a serious case of tyre degradation. So we have to be realistic with our chances for the race.
“Having said that, I think we have to see how our strategy works out during the race itself," said Kataoka, who is the current leader of the 2010 Japanese Super Taikyu Series with Fariqe.
His teammate, Fariqe said: “I knew we would have a tough time this year. The level of competition has moved up a notch from last year. We knew that we could not target pole position for qualifying on Friday as we had to struggle with inconsistent tyre performance throughout the qualifying round.
“But we will still put in a good fight in the race,” promised the 2007 Asian Touring Car Championship winner.
For the first time in the history of the MMER, the event organizers had appointed Pirelli as the Official Tyre for the race.
The battle among the Sports Production entries looked set to be a close fight between the Aston Martin and Lotus, specifically the MOFAZ Racing team led by Fairuz Fauzy and the AYLEZO Empire Motorsports, which features former A1GP Team Singapore driver Denis Lian.
Denis – the 2002 AF2000 champion and the first Singaporean to compete in the MMER - said that he was looking forward to race with Fairuz, whom he said was supposed to be his team-mate in 2001 before the Malaysian F1 test driver was forced to withdraw at the 11th hour.
Partnering former Malaysian equestrian champion Ashraff Dewal and former national jet ski rider Zen Low, Denis strongly believes that their lower-powered Lotus 2-11 can match the powerful Aston Martin in the 12-hour battle.
He said the strength of the Lotus lies in the fact that it is light-weight, a great advantage which would give them awesome speed to match their more powerful opponents. Denis, however, was quick to add that being lightweight can also prove to be a disadvantage.
“There’s always a bit of issue when it comes to long distance racing, the car is a little bit more fragile for an endurance race compared to our rivals,” said Dennis in clear reference to their 2007 disaster.
Though they were ahead of their closest rival by more than three laps, with less than an hour to the chequered flag, tragedy struck when one of the car’s wheel nut broke. The incident forced the team into early retirement in the 2007 race.
Last year, the car encountered electrical problems and caught fire just after four hours of racing.
Denis said: “We have been working hard for this race. Our preparations have been thorough. Hopefully, we would be problem-free this year and finish the race on the podium,” he said.
The Touring Production Class looks set to be a close fight between the Honda Malaysia Racing Team, Garage R Racing, G Harry Racing and Wing Hing Motorsports, which would have the Sepang 1000-kilometer winners - Kenny Lee and Australian Chris O’ Shannessy - behind the steering wheel of their Toyota Altezza.
2010 MMER STARTING GRID
Latest News