What a weekend! What a season! The final round of Thailand Super Series (TSS) 2019, held last weekend at Chang International Circuit, netted us the Drivers’ Overall and Teams’ titles in Super Car GT3 and, added to the Drivers’ AM title which we wrapped up during the last round, that made it a clean sweep of all three of the big titles for B-Quik Racing.
A season that has seen us grow as a team in every area ended with another rewarding weekend.
We entered 2019 with ambitious plans to run the new Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo as the team kicked off its eleventh season of racing and we came into the final weekend of the year – the series’ second trip to Buriram – with the Teams’ and Drivers’ titles at stake. We arrived in the North East with a small cushion in both – and the target was to tot up the points we needed to put both titles to bed.
For the first time we also expanded our racecar roster for Super Car GT3 to three Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evos, the additional No 27 car in the hands of former F1 driver Rio Haryanto and the reigning Audi Sport R8 LMS Cup champion Andrew Haryanto. The pair – racing with us for the first time – got up to speed very quickly in practice and qualifying and looked sharp and pacey throughout.
For Race 1 we enjoyed our first front row of the grid lock out with Sandy Stuvik and Martin Rump planting the No 2 car on pole with the debuting No 27 alongside. Henk Kiks and Daniel Bilski in the No 26 started on Row 2 to put all three cars into the top four.
At the green lights Sandy converted pole into the race lead and Daniel got a real flyer to jump up to P2 with Andrew tucking in behind and we ran in 1-2-3 formation over the opening laps. Eventually, at the finish of the race, we recorded a superb 1-2 with Sandy and Martin claiming the win from Rio and Andrew who enjoyed a fantastic start with the team while the No 26 car had a busy run to P6 and helped lockdown the crucial points we needed to wrap up the Teams’ title with a race to spare!
That win made it four victories on the trot and five from seven races, three of those going the way of Henk and Daniel and two to Sandy and Martin.
Race 2 saw the fastest of our three cars starting from P2 on the grid in the hands of Martin but he was bottled up behind the pole sitting Ferrari during his stint before handing over to Sandy who saw the Drivers’ championship coming towards him as our other two cars were knocked out of the reckoning mid race due to incident damage.
Sandy basically needed to be classified to be the champion. But he proved just why we wanted him in the team this year as he simply wouldn’t settle for the comfortable top five finish that was coming his way. Sandy barged his way through the top runners before elbowing himself into the lead with just three corners remaining before the chequered flag.
However, the stewards later adjudged he had used too much of his elbows in making the pass stick and slapped him with a 5 second penalty which dropped the No 2 car to P2 which was still good enough to comfortably see Sandy win the Drivers’ title.
That capped a truly superb weekend in a perfect year as we take home all three Super Car GT3 titles.
We would like to thank Absolute Racing and Audi Sport Customer Racing Asia for all their support this season, without which none of this would have been possible, and also to thank Thailand Super Series for putting together a strong and competitive championship. We already have exciting plans for next year and we will announce more news shortly.
Source. FastTrack Media
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