Malaysian drivers are making their presence felt in Thailand with Wing Hin Motorsports sending a team to race there regularly. Over the weekend, Mitchell Cheah and Naquib Azlan celebrated a double podium finish in Round 3 of the Thailand Super Series Super Compact Class at the Chang International Circuit.
The pair, in a Toyota Yaris, has raced to a spectacular 2nd overall finish in Race 1 on Saturday, and faced strong challenges throughout the 1-hour of Race 2. Again having to start from 8th on the grid, Naquib quickly made his way up the grid in the first lap. He even had an attempt for the lead by going on that very first lap but received slight contact and had to recover the car after being punted off the track.
He regained composure and rejoined the race in 7th,, charging his way back to 4th after 12 minutes of racing. Then, fighting for 3rd another contact bumped him off the track, this time with the Honda CRZ of T. Chanyaboot.
Naquib pitted 27 minutes into the race to hand over to Cheah who rejoined in 7th position. Cheah however, put in some exceptionally hot laps to progressively move up the standings. When he finally reached second place in the running, he was pursued by Toyota GAZOO Racing Thailand driver Norrarat Apivart in another Yaris right to the finish line.
The two drivers exchanged places for 2nd place several times in the final lap and exiting the final corner, Cheah had been just ahead by a bumper’s length but the outright straight line speed Norrarat possessed saw him cross the finish line just 0.121 seconds ahead of Cheah to claim 2nd place. Winning the race and 7.9 seconds ahead was the pair of T. Thanaroj and S. Thanapattra in the YK Motorsports Honda CRZ.
“It was an incredible battle to the finish line. We knew we had a quicker car through the technical sections of the track but Norrarat had the outright straight line speed. It could have gone either way. It’s still fantastic to finish the race weekend with back-to-back podiums,” said Cheah.
