Unfortunately missed podium for Andrea Caldarelli

The first SUPER GT Sepang Round dates back to 2002, when it was introduced as one official round of this Series. And again this year, Sepang International Circuit (Malaysia) was the stage to unfold the “AUTOBACS SUPER GT INTERNATIONAL SERIES MALAYSIA” always characterized by the equatorial, various tropical features, – the one race everybody looks forward to seeing fierce battles take place every time. Under a light overcast of clouds spreading in the skies above, and temperatures reading 35 degrees Celsius, 43 degrees C on the track added with very high humidity, the Official Practice of two hours got off to a start at 13:00, which also opened the whole weekend’s program. LEXUS TEAM KeePer TOM’S (No. 37) started the day with Daisuke Ito working on the machine setting, then followed by Andrea Caldarelli to work on the long-run. Then later, in the remaining 10-minutes of only the GT500 class running, Andrea was back on the machine again and recorded a 7th position time (1’57.215) to complete this session. Andrea Caldarelli on KeePer TOM’S SC430 with medium tyres, was entrusted to run the Q1 in which he pushed with his utmost delivering an 8th position time of 1’56.214 in the very last of the time-recording laps, and made it to the Q2.

In Q2, Andrea’s teammate Daisuke Ito also gave a strong performance with truly composed, veteran driving, as further improving the time to 1’55.688. Hence, the team placed 3rd, not a bad position to start the race on Sunday! Andrea Caldarelli on No. 37 from the second row of the grid was appointed to serve the starting driver. In the 7th lap, the mighty young SUPER GT driver from Italy quickly climbed to P2 after passing other machines that lost pace by collision. However, in the 9th lap getting passed by one machine, No. 37 was back in P3 again, and for a while had to stick behind patiently watching how the battle between the leaders, no. 12 (CALSONIC IMPUL GT-R) and no. 18 (Weider Modulo HSV-010), running just ahead of him may turn out. Eventually on the 20th lap when the top cars finally switched places, Andrea ran tail-to-nose with no. 12 and for some while with not much change in these positions. On the 25th lap, making a pit stop the remainder of the race was now handed over to Daisuke Ito.

Only however at this time, the pit stop took time and No. 37 could not help but slide down two positions and chase the top again, running in P4. From about the 40th lap, KeePer TOM’S SC430 pushed ever harder as skillfully holding off car no. 18 which was catching up fast from behind. And while this fight continued all the way to the final lap, suddenly a misfortune struck! No. 37 got hit by a GT300 machine (subject to penalty of +30 seconds) and by this accident the right-side rear got burst! Fighting off such hard battles with car 18, and also against heat – the Japanese driver of this team, Ito struggled hard clinging onto P4 till the end, but with the machine getting hurt and not much more that could be done, the team was chequered in 10th place (1 point gained), and finished the weekend in Malaysia with somewhat a bitter ending.

Andrea Caldarelli
“I think my stint itself went pretty well, with some strong tail-to-nose actions with car 12, in battle for the top position. And twice, there were chances of overtaking, but for the sake of our tyres I avoided taking any risk, also expecting to reverse positions by the pit-stop. However, there was about 15 seconds loss in the pit, which cost us positions down. Daisuke did some fabulous driving throughout the last half of the race giving his best but in the very end got hit by a GT300 car, and what a disappointment this is… But this is racing. Let’s put it all behind us now and focus on getting it all back in SUGO”.