The Parade Lap – A Final Look at 2021 | Asia Motorsports Network
7 min readThe Parade Lap takes you on a quick trip around Asia providing you the highlights all in one quick read!
TOP NEWS
Looking back over the past 12 months there have been many really big stories in Asia Motorsports from Rossi racing for Petronas in his final MotoGP season to F3 Asian winner Zhou Guanyu signing with Alfa Romero to become the first Chinese F1 driver. Unfortunately though, the dominant story remains the pandemic and the effects border restrictions have had on Motorsport throughout Asia in 2021. While teams and drivers were able to return to tracks in there home countries the international aspect of Asia Motorsports was completely decimated with the impact unevenly spread through the region.
As an example, Japan, which has a strong homogeneous motorsport community, ran a pretty much normal schedule in 2021 where as countries like Malaysia, Thailand and The Philippines crammed as much as they could into shortened seasons after their lockdowns were lifted. International Series were left to choose their own routes with varying levels of success. The F3 Asian Championship (now Formula Regional Asia) and Asian Le Mans both chose to run in the United Arab Emirates, but with border restrictions eliminating most Asian teams the fields were predominantly made up of all European teams and drivers. However, Asian talents who had been racing in Europe stood tall at the end of each series with Chinese driver Zhou Guanyu winning the F3 Asian title for his Abu Dhabi Racing by Prema team and Chinese driver and Rising Star Ye Yifei winning the Asia Le Mans title for his G-Drive Racing team.
Porsche’s Carrera Cup Asia series, who scrapped their 2020 season due to the pandemic chose a schedule that allowed them to only race in China. Twenty year old Rising Star Daniel LU Wenlong won the Championship albeit against a lesser skilled than normal field. Other series like the Asia Road Racing Championship and GT World Challenge Asia went another route by delaying the start of their season in hopes restrictions would ease allowing them to run a normal international calendar. After serval delayed starts both series ended up canceling their entire 2021 seasons.
What 2022 has in store no one knows, but with early season calendars both F3 Asia and Asian Le Mans have already announced they will be racing exclusively in the UAE again. Currently odds of any Asian teams being able to join the series look bleak. Porsche Carrera Cup Asia will again feature a heavily China centric calendar with 6 of their planned 8 stops being in mainland China. SRO recently announced it was adding a Japan Cup to the reworked 2022 GT World Challenge Asia which features 4 or the 6 races being in Japan. This should allow them to at least get some semblance of a season in similar to what Porsche has done with the Carrera Cup Asia series. I will keep my fingers crossed heading into 2022 and do my best to keep the Event Calendar up to date as all the series release their plans.
MOTORSPORT
The final 2 rounds of the Malaysia Championship Series ran at Sepang International Circuit December 14 – 16th. Round 3 was the same format as the first 2 rounds with the final 4th round being a 300 KM endurance format worth double points. Leona Chin, who has had an incredible run in 2021, powered her team to victory in final round capturing the overall championship in the Malaysia Touring Car (MTC) category.
You can read more about Leona Chin’s season in this article by Chips Yap on Piston.my.
The Thailand Super Series (TSS) wrapped up their compressed season with the final 3 rounds of the 5 round series over Christmas weekend at Chang International Circuit in Buriram. This years TSS consisted of 3 classes of GT (GT3, GTC and GTM) as well as Pickup, Touring, Production, Compact and Eco (under 1500cc) classes. With Thailand easing border restrictions, Singha Motorsports was able to bring in Earl Bamber to race along side Piti Bhirombhakdi in the premier GT3 class. They battled it out with the B-Quik / Absolute team of Martin Rump and Daniel Bilski for the series title. Consistency won the day and the series for Singha Motorsport as Bamber / Piti rode a victory in Rd 4 and 2nd place finishes in the other 4 rounds to both the driver and team titles narrowly beating out the B-Quik / Absolute team for both.
One of the stories behind the story of this years TSS was B-Quik / Absolute adding Sri Lanka driver Eshan Pieris to the other GT3 car for the final 3 rounds of the series. Pieris had some success in the F3 Asian series in 2018/19 and was set to compete in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia 2020 season with Absolute Racing before than pandemic put his racing plans on a nearly 2 year hold. With limited time to prepare, Pieris and teammate Sandy Stuvik finished 4th in Rd 3 and battled through some issues in Rd 4 and 5 finishing 7th in each. When Eshan is able to return to racing a full schedule expect him to become a dominant driver.
RISING STARS – Ye Yifei
In late January 2021, Alpine Academy Director Mia Sharizman told the media regarding Zhou Guanyu “We will never see another Chinese driver [with Zhou’s prospects] for the next 15-20 years, whether in Formula 3 or Formula 4 or Formula 2.” [February 1, 2021, Scott Mitchell, The Race – ZHOU HAS ‘ONCE IN A GENERATION’ SHOT AT F1 SEAT – ALPINE] This struck me as a rather bold statement but given state of Chinese Motorsport and Alpine (Renault) Academy’s previous endeavors with Chinese drivers I understood the sentiment. When Zhou signed his F1 with Alfa Romero in November I thought back on what Sharizman had said and wondered “Who’s next?” Not just who’s the next Chinese F1 driver, but who are all the young Asia talents that are rising up through their respective Motorsport paths. This has led AMN to create “Rising Stars” where we track and highlight what’s happening with the next generation of talent throughout Asia.
We’ve chosen Chinese driver, 21 year old Ye Yifei as our 1st ever Rising Star to introduce to the Asia Motorsport Network. Ye, who coincidently is a former Alpine Academy driver, began racing in Europe back in 2013 and was able to finish 4th in the ROK Cup International Final in 2014. He then began working his way up the Formula ladder winning the 2016 French F4 Championship with FFSA Academy and finishing 3rd in the 2018 Formula Renault Eurocup with Josef Kaufmann Racing. Unfortunately, when he was given his shot at the FIA Formula 3 Championship in 2019 with Hitech Grand Prix he finished a disappointing 21st and didn’t score a single point until the last race of the season when he finished 6th which led to him being dropped by Alpine Academy. Undeterred, Ye joined Absolute Racing for the 2019 F3 Asian Winter Series finishing 2nd and then dominated the 2020 Euroformula Open Championship. Driving for CryptoTower Racing Team, Ye captured 13 poles and had 11 1st place finishes in the 18 round series.
In 2021, Ye switched course to LMP2 and became the first driver ever to win both the European and Asian Le Mans Series. If not for an unfortunate electrical issue Ye’s Oreca 07 LMP2 on the final lap of the 24 Hours of Le Mans cost him and his Team WRT another victory. Ye’s 2021 run caught the attention of Porsche who named him there 2022 Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific ‘selected driver’. According to Porsche Motorsport Asia Pacific boss Alex Gibot, the deal is tailored to preparing him for a potential drive in the forthcoming Porsche LMDh programme.
You can read more about Porsche’s plans for Ye is this article from Motorsport.com’s Gary Watkins.
MOD CULTURE
Despite many shows and events being cancelled over the past 2 years, the modification scene throughout Asia appears to be as strong as ever. Nowhere is it more evident than at this past October’s GT Show China that took place in Foshan. The GT Show has grown exponentially since it’s start in 2017 with this years Fall edition featuring over 3,000 vehicles and more than 70,000 in attendance. The GT Show also has an annual Spring show in their hometown of Suzhou, which will run March 25 – 27, 2022.
With China’s borders still essentially closed we’ll have to settle for this montage put together by DIFILMS to catch a glimpse of China’s Mod Culture.
Best viewed directly on Youtube where you can Like, Share and Subscribe to this and other great content highlighting Motorsports and the Modification Culture through out Asia.
SEE YOU ALL ON THE NEXT LAP!
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