After four rounds of intense wheel-to-wheel action, the 2015 Malaysia Championship Series finally concludes with a two-race showdown at the 5th round on November 8th 2015. The battle this year has been an exciting one as we saw events like Proton R3’s re-emergence to the front, the debut of the Iriz R3 race car and also Mark Darwin’s jump into Touring Production. But without wasting time any further, let us look into last weekend’s race.
With no more haze in sight, fresh air is finally back in Sepang as well as the sunny weather. The first race took place in the Sunday morning where the track was still cold, forcing some of the drivers to play it cautiously. Starting with the Touring Production, Mark Darwin was already eyeing for the podium after having qualified in pole position. However an accident during the early leg of the race forced him to retire from Race 1.
In the chaos of the crash, the positions were shuffled and saw Claire Jedrek / Lai Wee Sing of Team R Engineering who started from fifth position taking the chequered flag after 10 laps of intense racing. Fahrizal Hasan / Keifli Othman of JC Racing Team started the race behind Mark and were able to hold on the position until the end of the race.
Damien Dielenberg took third place after starting in fourth position, followed by Alan Wong / Chris Tan in fourth who went up two positions from the starting grid. Fredrick Soo did a terrific job as well going up three places to finish in fifth place.
In the MTC category, the first three places were locked by Proton R3 of Fariqe Hairuman in the Suprima S, Tengku Djan Ley in the Iriz and Syafiq Ali in the Preve. Aside from Syafiq swapping places with Djan, the Proton R3 trio managed to lock the podium to theirselves after crossing the chequered flag.
In Race 2, Sepang gave a different challenge as rain started to pour down at the start of the race. Although the FD2R race car was badly damaged from Race 1, the skilful crew members from Team Sakura Tedco managed to patch the car just in time for Mark to use in the second race. Overcoming the odds, Mark made his way through the pack and took home a third place finish in Race 2.
Taking second place for Touring Production was Jonathan Xie Bayu, and Mitchell Cheah from N1 Racing Team took the final win for TP in 2015.
Somehow the new Iriz R3 race car favours the wet and has no problems playing in the rain. Exploiting this capability to the max, Tengku Djan left the whole pack to grab the win for Race 2. The battle for second and third place was fought hard between Proton R3’s James Veerapen and Syafiq Ali against Fitra Eri, but in the end Fitra Eri emerged victorious by taking home second place and followed by Syafiq Ali in third.
