Petronas Syntium Team Grabs 1&2 Podium in 24 Hours Tokachi
August 1, 2008
After completing 637 laps, 1,440 minutes, 28 pit stops and more than 3,000 kilometers on the mileage dial, the PETRONAS Syntium Team have come away from the gruelling 24hours of Tokachi endurance race with a historic 1-2 finish, a first for the team.
In addition to featuring the season’s existing line up of drivers which included Masataka Yanagida (JPN), Fariqe Hairuman (MAS) and Tatsuya Kataoka (JPN) in the team’s No. 50 BMW Z4M Coupe; the second car featured Nobuteru Taniguchi (JPN) and Japanese youngster Hiroki Yoshida (JPN) who were joined by highly experienced guest driver Manabu Orido. Bringing his wealth of experience to boost the team’s line up, the 39-year old’s credentials include his experience in the Japanese Super GT championship, FIA GT championship and the North American NASCAR series as well as in the infamous Le Mans 24hours.
After several driver rotations as the sextet of drivers took their turns at the wheel of their respective cars throughout the duration of the 24-hours, the race witnessed several nail-biting moments brought on by the first of two safety car periods when an incident involving a car from a the different class eliminated the gaps that the drivers in both cars had built over the rest of the competition.
Recovering to rebuild the lead, the drivers still had to persevere through the intermittent drizzle that fell throughout the night portion of the race on top of the limited visibility. Nevertheless, on the 12th hour mark of the race at 3am on Monday morning saw the team chalk up its first landmark to earn five points for successfully reaching the half-way mark.
David Wong, Team Principal, PETRONAS Syntium Team: “Everyone in the crew – mechanics and engineers – did a tremendous job to prepare the cars for this difficult and demanding race. Through their efforts, the drivers had a trouble-free race. It was a flawless effort by everyone on the team! The result speaks for itself and more than makes up for the disappointment of our first outing in 2007. As this achievement is also the product of a collective effort, I must also thank all our partners including YOKOHAMA, BMW and PETRONAS for their incredible support throughout the weekend, without which none of this would have been possible.”
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it is a BMW Z4 which is infamous by there reliability and endurance
try race with a campro and dont too suprise to see it cannot last for 10 laps!
plus,a stock BMZ Z4 wont get 1-2 podium without any tuned up from the engineers..
Solid effort! well done..
Congrats to the team btw…
This will signal that they WILL be the team to beat in this year’s Merdeka Race.
if you want Proton to be the part of this glory, why not ask them to do so in the frst place? or work with them and developed high quality cars to race?.
someday, you will knew why they picked that car instead of ours…
btw..kudos to them…
cmon la….petronas is just a premium sponsor…its bmw that has the reins…only natural that they would use their own cars….
btw…kudos to the team…hopefully they can relicate this at the mme endurance..
for me i really hated that piece of sh**… cheap car but sell expensive… so gud luck la to all who support protons….