Double podiums for Sandy in Sepang
Sandy Kraokaew Stuvik and teammate Shaun Thong of Hong Kong produced two podium finishes in the first round of the Thailand Super Series at the famous Sepang International Circuit over the weekend in Malaysia.
Driving Audi R8 GT3 Ultra for B-Quik Racing, the duo quickly got up to speed and was up challenging for the top spots of the timesheets in the Friday practices.
Qualifying took place on Saturday, which saw the Thai driver take the pole position for Race 1 which would take place later that day. Sandy’s teammate Shaun Thong drove in the following qualifying session where he secured the second place, just behind former F1 driver Tomas Enge.
On Saturday afternoon Sandy had a brilliant start in race 1 and maintained his lead position into the first corner. The Thai driver then proceeded to pull away from the field at a rapid rate.
However, the Thai driver encountered a slow puncture on his rear right tire, forcing him to limp back to the pits to change tires and handed the R8 Ultra over to his teammate.
From there, Shaun drove and excellent stint, but the gap to the leading Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo was too large to make up. The pair finished in 2nd place, with the other B-Quik Racing Audi R8 GT3 Evo finishing just behind in 3rd place.
In the Sunday race, Shaun Thong took the start from 2nd place and tried to chase down the leading Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo.
A safety car before the pit window closed the gap that the leading Lamborghini had created, as Shaun handed the Audi R8 GT3 Ultra over to Sandy.
The Thai driver got up to speed quickly and began to close the gap to the leaders. Because Sandy and Shaun are both FIA Silver ranked drivers, their mandated pit-stop time is longer than their competitors.
Sandy kept hacking away at the leaders but the pit-stop time (with yesterday’s added success penalty of 10 seconds), the gap was too large to close in. Sandy finished under a second behind the 2nd place Lamborghini and a few seconds further up the road was the race winning B-Quik Audi R8 GT3 Evo driven by Henk Kiks and Daniel Bilski.
“It’s been a great weekend for the B-Quik team and our beautiful Audis. We have accumulated good points and more knowledge of the car as we now look towards the next round in Buriram. The cars have been fantastically prepared by the B-Quik engineers and mechanics, along with the technical support of Absolute Racing. I’m more excited than ever to get the next race underway, it can’t come soon enough! Thank you to all my sponsors for this opportunity,” Sandy said after the race.
The next race (round 2) will take place at Chang International Circuit, Buriram during 7-9 June 2019.
