Young Marcelo Philippines’ most decorated karter in ’07

MACAU – Clinching the Asian Karting crown, young ace karter Stefano Marcelo went down in the annals of Philippine Karting history as the winningest Filipino champion in a single season.

The 14-year-old Marcelo of San Miguel Corp.-Marcelo Racing only needed to finish second in the pre-final race to capture the overall Asian Karting crown recently in the championship round of the 2007 Asian Karting Open Championship Macau Kart Prix at the Kartodromo de Coloane.

The feat completed Marcelo’s mission for this year, and earned his place in the Philippine Karting history as the karting champion with the most number of titles won in a single season after clinching the Shell Helix Karter of the Year, the Cebu ROK Series Plum, the Asian Karting crown and even emerged among the world’s top 10 karters in the 2007 ROK World Cup in Italy.

He wrapped up the series with 110 points after finishing second to Japanese ace Naotaka Hori who pulled a sweep as Marcelo’s engine seized halfway through the final race.

Apart from clinching the Asian Karting crown, the Macau stint further proved Marcelo’s competitive talent racing with his red Maranello kart in the KF1 category where he battled against the world’s best factory drivers including World champions Marco Ardigo, Gary Catt and Will Stevens who are all using green Tony Karts.

Marcelo was one of the few Asians invited to compete against the Europeans in the KF1 category. He proved himself quite competitive, even raised the eyebrows of governing CIK-FIA officials and Tony Kart owner as he constantly qualifies ahead of Stevens and came just half a second behind Ardigo’s time despite using an old engine.

The pre-final race underscored Marcelo’s impressive talent as he  outmaneuvered the three world champions – Ardigo, Catt and Stevens – halfway through the race.

However, the Filipino ace karter had to slow down to save his tires but finished an impressive fifth place up against a very tough 28-man KF1 grid.

In the final race, Marcelo managed to sneak in fourth behind the Tony Kart factory karters. However, exhaustion from running in two very competitive races took its toll on him as he started to slow down by four-tenths of a second behind the leaders.

At the end of the 25-lap grueling race, Marcelo wound up 10th – a feat comparable to his impressive finish in the ROK World Cup up against the best of the world.

Even one of the Kosmic Factory Team bosses was quite impressed with Marcelo, commenting that it’s a tough task running in back-to-back highly-competitive races, and not even top European contenders could do such a thing.

“It’s quite an experience having to hang and rub paint with the world champions,” said Marcelo. “It was a fruitful stint considering we got the Asian Karting crown and had the privilege to race against the world champions.”

“We did not anticipate that it would be extremely physically demanding and tough for a youngster to run in two competitive races back-to-back. But Stefano’s talents glittered and proved he could live up to such a big challenge,” said John Marcelo, his father and a former jetski champ.

“Though in the end he came in so tired, Stefano was so enthusiastic on this experience as he now knows what he is capable of against the best of the bests,” he added.