Just six weeks remain until Thailand Super Series (TSS) kicks off its 2015 season in Buriram and the biggest and most successful factory-run team in Thailand, Toyota, has shown its hand. And as you would expect it’s a very strong hand.
Super Car Class 2-GTM is all set to provide what is going to be the most competitive season in racing memory and Toyota Team Thailand isn’t taking the challenge lightly. The crack team will expand its line up to three cars as it drafts in its Super 2000 star driver, Khun Manat Kulapalanont, to support its two regulars, 2013 champion Khun Nattavude Charoensukhawatana and Khun Nattapong Horthongkum. That’s a heck of a lineup and Toyota has to start as the favourite for the prestigious Teams’ title.
In Bangsaen last December Khun Kittipol Pramoj Na Ayudhya and Khun Thamrong Mahadumrongkul dug deep and delivered as they swept Singha Cosmo TT Motorsport to a double Teams’ title success in Super 2000, two drivers that are growing in stature really delivering big on one of the most demanding tracks in Thailand.
The big Holden Commodore V8 of Khun Craig Corliss is now setting off on its journey back to Thailand after a 15,000 km round trip to Australia for close season upgrades. That work should keep the New Zealander right in the Super Car Class 2-GTM hunt again this year.
This weekend has seen the much-anticipated competitive birth of the ‘TCR’ era of touring cars as the brand new ‘TCR International Series’ is supporting the Malaysian F1 Grand Prix in Sepang during its inaugural round. It’s the first time to see the new breed of cars in action, the opening race took place yesterday afternoon while the second will go to green lights later this morning. Here, the build up to the arrival of TCR Thailand is now getting underway as the series will be part of the 2016 TSS programme.
Finally, the winners are almost ready to receive their trophies as the glamorous ‘Thailand Super Series Champions Day 2014’ will place in just two days time, on Tuesday evening. This year the venue will be the prestigious Royal Bangkok Sports Club in the city’s Pathum Wan district and it really promises to be a very special event with new innovations and new trophies.
The biggest team in Thai motorsport today, Toyota Team Thailand, is busy wheeling out its biggest guns as it targets nothing short of title glory in Super Car this year. Toyota will be in the thick of some of the most competitive race action ever seen in Thailand as it enters its signature red, silver and white liveried racecars in Super Car Class 2-GTM, Super Car Class 3-GTC and Super 2000.
Last year Toyota very narrowly missed out on successfully defending its titles in Super Car Class 2-GTM; team leader Khun Nattavude Charoensukhawatana battled into contention all year long and took the title fight down to the final weekend in Bangsaen. However he did bag the vice champions spot after some superb drives.
Toyota plans to put that straight this year and will enter its strongest ever lineup in Super Car Class 2-GTM. Khun Nattavude and his 2014 teammate, Khun Nattapong Horthongkum, will both be back in the potent ’86′ racecars to fight for the title once again, but Toyota is pulling out all the stops and will enter a third car, which is currently under construction at the team’s Bangkok workshops.
Toyota’s Super 2000 star driver, Khun Manat Kulapalanont, has been the nod to drive the new car. He has a winning pedigree too, having claimed the Super 2000 title in 2012 driving a factory-run Toyota Altis, while over the last two seasons he’s driven an 86 especially developed by the team for that class, most recently taking a trip to the podium in Bangsaen last December.
On the sidelines of the 36th Bangkok International Motor Show last week, Toyota Team Manager Khun Suttipong Smittachartch outlined the team’s ambitious three-pronged strategy for this year. “We will join Super Car Class 2 with three cars and also in Super Car Class 3 and in Super 2000 we will join with two cars in Class B,” he said.
The team’s hugely successful Super Car Class 2-GTM 86 is currently taking pride of place on Toyota’s expansive booth in the Motor Show’s Challenger Hall. The car was created from the ground up by the team in Thailand, one of the few Super Car category machines still to be developed and built here, which pits their in house resources against world class factory built machines. But it’s a challenge that Khun Suttipong clearly relishes.
This will be the third season in Super Car Class 2-GTM for the 86 and visually the car at the show has a few new changes for 2015, a re-profiled new front splitter and other detailed front-end aero enhancements stand out. Under the skin there will also be a few tweaks, but this car already has a Drivers’ and Teams’ title to its name and it’s approaching the limit of its development.
“Only [the] suspension we have [upgraded] since last year,” Khun Suttipong confirms. He hopes the regulations better suit the team this year though. “Last year when we had more weight put on the car many things, the suspension, the transmission, were broken, that’s why we want to know exactly the weight of the car for this year,’ he says.
Running three cars this year in Super Car Class 2-GTM instead of the usual two means Toyota should be able to capitalise on championship points as they target regaining Teams’ title.
Khun Manat will be something of a dark horse. He’s fast, smooth, canny and has a proven winning pedigree in Super 2000, which is arguably the fiercest battleground in Thai motorsport. In Super 2000 format, at least, he’s also familiar with the Toyota 86.
His promotion to Super Car is certainly long overdue and he will be one that the fans will be looking out for when the new season kicks off in Buriram in May. Khun Suttipong notes Khun Manat’s had valuable cockpit time already with the Class 2-GTM machine during a recent acclimatisation test at Bira Circuit. “Manat has tested already with the car in January,” he says. The new machine is also taking shape. “Right now the third car is under build.”
Khun Manat is pleased to be graduating to Super Car and ready to play his part in Toyota’s ambitions to win the titles. “I’m happy to drive this car, I need to support my team for sure because we need to [aim for] the championship for Driver and Team,” he said.
“For sure I’m very excited to drive in Class 2,” Khun Manat continued. “I also heard that there are many cars in Class 2 for this year, it [will be] hard work for new drivers.”
While Khun Manat has driven the team’s 86 in Super 2000 for the last two years, they’re totally different animals, not least in that one has an engine of more than twice the capacity of the other. His new machine is a purpose built racecar while the Super 2000 version is much closer to its production roots.
“The character of the Class 2 and Super 2000 [86] is very different for sure, the new car has a lot of power and can be a bit hard to control so I need more practice,” he adds.
Toyota Team Thailand doesn’t participate in racing just to make up the numbers and Khun Manat will be expected to play an important role in sweeping up points if Khun Nattavude or Khun Nattapong fail to finish any races – while unquestionably he will provide a strong challenge for the points positions himself; this after all is a high drilled team that knows exactly how to win championships.
The Teams’ title is certainly the target this year, says Khun Suttipong. “We will try, that is what we propose; last year we had some retirements we couldn’t get the title,” he notes. “This year with over twenty cars coming to Class 2 it’s very exciting and very tough.”
Khun Suttipong further confirmed that Khun Chen Jian Hong will drive for the team again this year in Super 2000. Last year the Taiwanese driver debuted Toyota’s new-generation Altis but while it showed plenty of speed there was a steep development curve and a few DNFs kept him from making a serious run on the title.
However close season upgrades should eliminate the remaining bugbears and see the new Altis heading towards the Super 2000 Class B pace, as Khun Suttipong explained. “The engine is the same but we change the suspension system and transmission as those are the weak points last year,” he said.
Toyota Team Thailand will continue its policy of promoting the champions of its popular One Make Race series into Super 2000 for another season. Last year Khun Arthit Ruengsomboom was handed a Super 2000 drive as his ‘prize’ for winning the 2013 Toyota Yaris One Make Race title and he promptly delivered on his promise, romping to the Super 2000 Class C title.
This time round the winner the inaugural New Toyota Altis One Make Race title last year will thus get the nod from the team and drive alongside Khun Chen.
That means he will have an extra advantage of knowing the Altis racecar, albeit his new Super 2000 version will be a step forward and Khun Suttipong reckons that this, as well as it being Khun Chen’s second year in the car, will also help both drivers’ competitiveness. “The drivers know the car now more than before now,” he said.
And in fact they will get further cockpit time in the Altis as they have both been drafted into Toyota Team Thailand’s plans for European races this year. “We let them go to join the races in Germany with the Altis so they should know the car more and more,” says Khun Suttipong. He plans to enter five races in Germany this year, including a second attack on the legendary Nürburgring 24 Hours.
Toyota will wrap up its participation in TSS with a single 86 in Super Car Class 3-GTM. Khun Suttipong, who debuted this new machine at Buriram last year, will drive this car once again. The Team Manager, a highly experienced race driver, says this entry is purely “for fun” but in Bangsaen last December, the car’s second appearance, he was right in the thick of the race leading action and so expect to see Khun Suttipong firmly on the podium this year.
The ‘Thailand Super Series Champions Day 2014’ is coming up next Tuesday (31 March) when the winners across the programme of last year will be honoured.
For the second glamorous awards evening of the ‘TSS Era’, the venue shifts to the famous Royal Bangkok Sports Club in the heart of the city. TSS President Sontaya Kunplome will introduce ‘Thailand Super Series Champions Day 2014’.
Last year TSS inaugurated an iconic new trophy that remembers the greatest moments in Thai motorsport history to honour the champions each year.
As well as that prestigious trophy, this year an innovative new award will be added to the roll call of honours. Dubbed ‘Rising Star’ it will celebrate the arrival of newcomers to TSS who make a very positive impact both on track and in the paddock in their rookie year in categories, commemorating their climb to the top.
TSS Vice President Preeda Tantemsapya explains. “It’s very much a welcome trophy into TSS,” he says. “It will reflect sportsmanship and how a driver behaves both on and off the track, we see it as a gesture of welcome into the TSS categories and we hope it will be an award that promotes inclusivity and the driver will go on to make his name in the categories and achieve further successes.”
Khun Preeda also promises that the ‘Champions Day 2014’ will offer a greater visual experience with large new backdrops that will capture the special moment of excellence for the racers and teams. “We want to make it more special, for people to get better photographs to capture their moment of achievement,” he says.
Ever since the screaming engines of the Super Cars died away in mid December at the end of the 8th edition of the Bangsaen Thailand Speed Festival the teams have been busy rebuilding and preparing their cars for the new season – but in that three and a half month window, so far, no racecar has travelled as far as the big Holden Commodore VE of the Kiwi Racing Team.
The ‘V8 Supercar’ was shipped from Laem Chabang Port at the end of last year, heading by sea for the Brisbane, Australia, headquarters of Triple Eight Engineering to undergo a thorough rebuild. That’s the team that runs the official factory Red Bull team in the Australian V8 Championship – and it also built the Kiwi Racing Team’s Commodore, which is now a familiar sight to Thai racing fans.
And now the ‘big beast’ is fully overhauled and crated up, ready to set off on its way back to Thailand. Driver Khun Craig Corliss reports the car will depart from the Port of Brisbane on 1st April and is scheduled to arrive here nineteen days later. That all means, since Bangsaen, the car will have traveled a massive fifteen thousand kilometres.
Shipping the car back to its original builder, Triple Eight Engineering, really demonstrates the skyrocketing standards required to compete in Super Car this year. Khun Craig reports that “everything is crack tested and it’s basically like a new car.”
Khun Craig has raced the brutal Holden for the last two years in Super Car Class 2-GTM wearing an eye-catching orange colour scheme. That reflected the original livery from when it was in action in Australia clad in the colours of Triple Eight Engineering’s then title sponsor, ‘Vodafone’.
However the most striking visual aspect of the recent rebuild is its shiny new lurid-green livery that looks set to make it really stand out from the pack this season. The car is clearly rejuvenated and ready to carry the New Zealander into the battle once again.
Finally it’s here. The new TCR ‘era’ is in action for the first time at Sepang Circuit this weekend for Round 1 of the inaugural 2015 TCR International Series. The double-header race format is supporting the Malaysian Grand Prix, the first of three rounds to be on the Formula 1 programme this year.
It’s been a real rush to get prepared for the season opener but there are 17 drivers in action in the Sepang heat. Many of them are well known names to motorsport fans including former Ferrari, Minardi, Footwork-Arrows, Dallara and Sauber F1 driver Khun Gianni Morbidelli as well highly experienced touring car veteran Khun Franz Engstler, who raced at Bangsaen last December.
Another well known tin top star on the entry list is Khun Jordi Gené while these ‘old hands’ face plenty of fast youngsters including Khun Pepe Oriola, Khun Sergey Afanasyev and Khun Stefano Comini as well as a trio of promising teenage hotshots, Khun Ferenc Ficza, Khun Lorenzo Veglia and Khun Jordi Oriola.
Those seventeen drivers are split between the five brands in action in Sepang, Audi, Ford, Honda, Opel and SEAT. The first 10-lap race took place yesterday afternoon (Saturday) with the second race set to take place later this morning (Sunday). For the record it was American driver Khun Stefan Gleeson who bagged the first ever TCR pole position while it was Switzerland’s Khun Comini who yesterday claimed the first ever race win, after pulling out a comfortable 3.3-second advantage over Khun Pepe Oriola. SEAT in turn becomes the first brand to notch up a TCR win, in fact it locked out the top spots.
The eagerly anticipated competitive birth of TCR International Series marks the start of a rapid roll out of the brand new touring car formula – not just globally, but also here in Thailand. In February Racing Spirit Co. Ltd, the organiser of TSS, became the official promoter of TCR Thailand and the series will be launched here next year as part of the TSS programme. TCR International Series will visit Buriram in late October for the penultimate round giving Thai drivers and teams the chance to see the plethora of new machines up close.
Racing Spirit is locked into developing the concept for Thailand and further announcements can be expected soon.
The TSS ‘Era’, which is just two seasons old, has already seen a big rise in standards. And that’s from everyone – including the drivers. Top international ‘pros’ have rocked up, cutting edge cars such as BMW’s E90 have appeared, and that’s meant everyone has had to raise their game.
In the ultra-competitive Super 2000 category there are quite a lot of drivers that can be justifiably said to have raised their game even further over the season just gone. And, certainly, Singha Cosmo TT Motorsport’s trio of drivers clearly stand out for their ever-improving speed.
Take Khun Kittipol Pramoj Na Ayudhya. A few years ago he was pottering around Bira Circuit in a classic Alfa Romeo racecar – but in Bangsaen last December he started the final Super 2000 race of the season from overall pole position with the best of the best clustered behind him. He’s come a long, long way in just a few years.
Khun Kittipol’s efforts – and that of his equally quick teammates Khun Thamrong Mahadumrongkul and Khun Chayut Yangpichit – helped Singha Cosmo TT Motorsport seal the Teams’ Overall title in Super 2000, by the narrowest of margins. They racked up a massive 358 points over a highly consistent season to nail the title down by a margin of just 2 points.
That’s a heck of an achievement, especially as Khun Kittipol and Khun Thamrong are Class B drivers. Needless to say those two also romped away with the Class B Teams’ title although this time it was in the bag before they arrived in the fishing resort on the southern edge of Chonburi. In the end they amassed 430 points in Class B with their closest rival trailing in on 258 points.
Despite it being a very successful weekend when the dust had finally settled, it hadn’t been the easiest of events for Khun Kittipol. As well as a podium finish in the first race, a pole position in the second and double Teams’ championship silverware, he also suffered one of the biggest crashes of the week, whacking the barriers head on between T17 and T18 just as he was defending the overall race lead.
But first to rewind to the start of the event. Khun Kittipol didn’t enjoy the easiest of qualifying sessions and that meant he was already on the backfoot for Saturday’s first race, as he explains. “I didn’t qualify well as I was using a spare gearbox, so I only managed to qualify twelfth,” he said. “I started in the middle of the pack and managed to gain a few places at Turn 2. After that I was determined to hunt down those in front, but I only caught up with the Toyota of Manat [Kulapalanont].
“We had a pretty exciting and fair fight for a couple of laps and eventually I managed to overtake him before going up Khao Sam Mook,” Khun Kittipol continued. “I didn’t really know where I finished at first, only to find out later that I finished fifth overall and third in class, which meant I would be starting on pole position for Sunday’s race. My first ever pole for the Super 2000 category [and] in fact I think it was my first ever pole in my racing career!”
There was less opening race luck for his teammate in the other – theoretically identical – Honda Civic FD. “[Khun Thamrong] was running a couple of places behind me when his final drive broke a lap and a half before the checkered flag,” noted Khun Kittipol. In fact Khun Thamrong had been embroiled in a battle for much of the race with the ‘other’ factory Toyota, this time the #58 Altis driven by Taiwanese hotshot Khun Chen Jian Hong. Khun Thamrong’s car was clearly down on power but he put in a superb performance to remain in amongst his rivals all race – although that DNF was costly as he would have to start the last race from the back of the grid.
For the second and final race of the weekend – and of the 2014 season – the two Singha Cosmo Civics bookended the entire grid. As the afternoon sun in Bangsaen really hotted up Khun Kittipol edged the red, black and white #25 entry into the slot reserved for ‘P1’ while in the #24 entry Khun Thamrong slunk into his back of the grid slot, a full hundred metres further down the ‘Beach Road’ grid and out of sight. But it wouldn’t be very long before there were huge fireworks.
“Me on pole and [Khun Thamrong] starting eighteenth,” explained Khun Kittipol. “I had a pretty good start and managed to retain my leading position. Into Turn 2 of the second lap, Munkong [Sathienthirakul] dived down the inside of me, I didn’t really see him and we clashed going up Khao Sam Mook. It wasn’t a big impact but I think he damaged his steering so he dropped out halfway through lap 3 and then the fast cars of Tin [Sritrai], closely followed by Carlo [Van Dam], were quickly behind me. Carlo then had problem and dropped back and Tin was right up behind me going into the SS [Bangsaen Hotel] U-turn.
“That’s when my onboard GPS told me to turn right and I headed right into the barrier,” Khun Kittipol says with a laugh. He wasn’t at fault for the incident and after being clipped by the car behind the #25 Civic instantly spun round and whacked the barriers hard.
However, more like a seasoned pro than a ‘gentleman’ driver, Khun Kittipol collected the wildly spinning car in the narrowest and slipperiest of places on this tricky track, skillfully straightened it out through the SS Bangsaen Hotel Hairpin and put the power down to rejoin the race. Behind him Turn 18 was a real sea of Civic bodyparts, there were bits strewed everywhere and – crucially – that included parts of the radiator, which meant he wouldn’t get much further, despite that superb recovery.
His rival for the race lead was whacked with a drive through penalty the next time around but with Khun Kittipol’s teammates picking up points (Khun Thamrong had in fact battled all the way from the back of the grid to get onto the Class B podium) as well as his excellent points finish in first race, that meant the team walked away from Bangsaen with a double Teams’ trophy haul. And in the Drivers’ championship Khun Thamrong and Khun Kittipol were first and second runners up in Class B – as well as fourth and sixth in the overall final standings. Fantastic work from drivers that can no longer be bracketed as ‘gentlemen’.