Marcelo pulls off third straight sweep in karting

CEBU CITY – Defending champion Stefano Marcelo of Maranello-San Miguel Corp. -Marcelo Racing is not used to arrive-and-drive conditions, but he did it with much pizzazz as he pulled his third straight sweep recently in the 2008 Shell Karting Super Series at the Cebu Kart Zone here.

 Cebuano race engineer Jed Neri and the Marcelo Racing Team  prepared the stage for Marcelo’s stint here as they arrived a couple of days earlier. But the 15-year-old Marcelo barely had enough time for practice.  He arrived Saturday morning as he had to attend to school exams the day before. 

It took its toll. Marcelo finished only second to Javi Benitez in the qualifying time trials but he quickly got his groove going, wresting the lead from Benitez on the second lap. 

Despite ignition problems, Marcelo won the hearts of the big Cebuano crowd as he coasted to victory in Heat 1  after closely trailing Vencer John Suba.

Then everything went smooth in the last two races where he controlled the tempo wire-to-wire, winning over Juha Turalba of R2R-Tuason Racing and Cebu bet Patrick Gandionco.

With the triumph, Marcelo further fortified his grip of solo leadership to stay on course for  bid a back-to-back Karter of the Year award.

“It was a bit tough to arrive and drive. The Cebu track is known for its notoriously changing track conditions and I was also worried that the talented Cebuano karters would dominate us on the track,” said Stefano. 

“But I’m happy everything went smooth for us, except for the ignition problem that kept cutting the Revs to 10,000 instead of the usual 13,400 RPMs in Race 1. And I’m thankful that the Marcelo Racing crew straight away resolved the problem,” he added.

The exams forced Stefano to forego his stint in Belgium and the Italian races of the World Super Karting European Series this month but this will give him enough time to prepare and train for his title defense in the coming kickoff of the 2008 Asian Karting Open Championship set June 28-29 in Macau.

It will be another uphill climb as his father John Marcelo and the crew will arrive ahead to set-up the kart for the Macau Race while Stefano will fly in Saturday morning going straight to the qualifying again.

“The exams are my priorities for now as a student of Britiah School Manila. I’m looking forward to a back-to-back Asian Karting championship. Both the Belgium and Italian races should have been good tune-ups for the coming Asian Karting kickoff in Macau where I’m also planning to race against the world’s best in the KF1 Championship.”

“But at least I’ll get a good rest, do adjustments on the kart and work on other aspects where I have to improve on,” he added.