Local garage ST Powered does Singapore proud at Sepang 1,000km endurance race debut

Story and photos by Cheryl Tay

Sepang, Malaysia, June 5, 2010 — Eight Singaporean teams out of 55 entries — inclusive of both Class 1 and 2 — took to the track at Sepang to attempt 1,000 kilometres in production cars below 1,900cc.

These two classes were previously part of the 12-hour Merdeka Millenium Endurance Race (MME), as Class B and C. The S1K is hence a breakaway from MME, so as to give the smaller-engined cars a chance at the race and not be out-qualified by the faster cars.

This is only the second S1K in history, with Class 1 for cars between 1650cc to 1900cc and Class 2 for cars with engine capacity below 1600cc.

With a minimum of two drivers and a maximum of four drivers to a car, the first team that completes 181 laps wins the race.

Qualifying for the race is done the day before the race on a Friday, with registration, scrutineering and free practice done the day before qualifying.

All eight Singaporean teams were registered for Class 2, hailing from local garages ST Powered, HKS Garage-R, KC Autolink and Choon’s Motorworks.

This is the first time ST Powered entered S1K, with two cars registered under the name Team ST Wangan. The first car consisted of drivers Desmond Soh, director of ST Powered; Teh Kian Boon, a mechanic of ST Powered; and Aloysius Lek who is currently serving National Service.

Whilst Soh has had experience in circuit racing, Lek and Teh were completely new to circuit racing. Teh has only participated in drag races before and Lek has never raced before.

As part of preparation for the race, Lek and Teh travelled to Thailand for training at Singha Racing School.

Qualifying was good as the team qualified in overall eighth. The qualifying results determine the starting positions on the grid for the race, with the qualifying time as the average best lap time of the drivers.

Things were looking good as the team was the highest qualifier of the eight Singaporean teams.

“Unfortunately, we came into the pits within the first two laps as we thought there was something wrong with the car. That wasted precious time and after we exited from the pit we were dead last in 54th place,” said 37-year-old Teh who started the race.

That was not the end of unfortunate incidents.

Soh later had to serve a drive through penalty for overtaking under the yellow flag and an additional pit stop had to be made when the distributor broke down. Altogether the team took nine pit stops, three more than planned.

Said Soh who drove the last leg of the race, “The toughest part of the race was the last hour because the car was misfiring and even after we pitted in to check on it, the problem persisted. During the last 20 laps, the misfiring was intermittent but we didn’t have time to pit in anymore so we just did our best to protect our third placing. I’m very grateful that we managed to bring the car home and finish on the podium.”

Whilst ST Powered’s first car eventually did well, the other car faced a run of ill fate, with the engine blowing up after 145 laps.