Bringing back The Golden Age Of Racing

Credit to Author: MIKE POTENCIANO| Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2019 16:16:55 +0000

MIKE POTENCIANO

(Part 2)

After discussing the short history of Philippine motor sports last week, wherein we started with the great rally days of the 1980s, we hope that you were able to see how rich our racing history was in the past.

Let us now continue to trace how we were able to bring back the Golden Age of Racing at the start of the 21st century. Another generation of racers would emerge and the followers of this column will surely be shocked at what they will read about this time.

Car firms are the key

When the two race tracks at Subic and Batangas rose in 1994, car manufacturers were the first to throw in their support to promote motor sports. Japanese manufacturers Mitsubishi, Nissan, Mazda and Toyota battled Korean made Kia and Hyundai along with Malaysia’s Proton.

Local racing heroes filled the grids to the delight of the spectators and organizers. Nissan had the Ramirez family, led by Philippine racing legend Pocholo and sons Kookie and George, all driving the new Sentras. Toyota had its own Toyota Corolla Cup one-make series and was supported by the majority of the brand’s dealers from all over the country.

Our MP Turbo Racing Team started with Diamond Motors and after a year, became part of Mitsubishi’s two-team effort. Caltex was the major sponsor of our Caltex-Diamond Motors-MP Turbo Racing Team, with Carlos Anton and myself as the main drivers. Mandy Eduque’s team formed the core of the Shell-Mitsubishi team.

We eventually shifted in 1997 to Hyundai Elantras through their distributor Francisco Motors Corp. We had lots of drivers in the Production Class that had the Novice and Open Class drivers running in the same cars in separate races.

Our main opponent that time was the Mazda Team of Jojo Silverio and Vincent Floirendo with their special 323 Mazdaspeed variant. After winning their first year of competition, the organizers decided to bring them back to the standard 323 Familia, and Mazda pulled out of racing during the start of the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

International racing dream

Before the fall, we had international events such the Asian Festival of Speed (AFOS) that came to our shores in the early 1990s. This gave the Filipinos a taste of top-of-the-line racing with modern and expensive DTM cars like the Mercedes Benz 190 2.3-16, BMW M3, Opel Vectra and Alfa Romeos.

With the cars becoming too expensive to run, the AFOS cars shifted to Group A cars that were heavily-modified production vehicles. Our very own Jojo Silverio competed in a BMW 320 and George Ramirez in a Honda Integra. Jody Coseteng also joined the premiere Macau Touring Car Championship in the new millennium.

Formula car route

We took the formula/single-seater route in 1996 when we joined the Formula Asia 2000 (FA2000) series. This series staged races in Indonesia, India, Malaysia, China and the Philippines. Our first year effort was rewarded with the FA2000 Rookie Championship and fifth place overall.

Formula Toyota was introduced shortly in our country to give our local drivers a taste of open wheel racing. This proved to be very popular and had the backing of the number 1 car manufacturer, Toyota.

In 2002, the Asian Formula 3 (AF3) Championship was born, and our own motor sports visionary Ed Peña had the clout to make it happen. He created the series to give Southeast Asian drivers a chance to drive the fast F3 machines and bring them to different tracks across the region.

The AF3 series had a great run that attracted a lot of foreigners to start their careers there and make it big in the higher forms of racing. This era with the international formula races and local touring car races with the car manufacturers getting involved in the mid 1990s was considered the second golden age of racing in the country by many racers and media people.

Financial crisis fall

Unfortunately, the Asian financial crisis came in the last part of 1997 and triggered a sharp increase in fuel and commodity prices. A greater part of the Southeast Asian region was hit hard with sponsors cutting their budgets, and marketing expenses for racing first to be shot down.

Philippine motor sports, however, proved to be more resilient than what people were expecting. Toyota continued its support of the Formula Toyota and the Corolla Cup series. Hyundai had just come in to provide our team the equipment in the production car races that allowed us to be competitive against the formidable Mazda and Nissan teams.

Other motor racing disciplines like slalom, autocross and drag racing had their own share of active participants and even had a steady increase of racers after the crisis.

The best part was that we only had three years of racing when the crisis came and the excitement of the new sport was still there! The seeds that were sown before the crisis were now being harvested, and everyone thought that it was just a matter of time before supporters would again market their products in racing.

However, a lot of the organizers became complacent and underestimated the overall impact of the economic slowdown. Soon, the sport slowly lost its shine and the cost of racing became much higher at the turn of the century. We lost the next generation of racers to other sports, and the ugly head of sport politics came out to stall its growth.

There are a lot of theories and explanations that were offered why the sport went down. Next week, we will tackle some of these problems and wrap it up with what we think will bring up the sport back to its feet!

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