MANILA, Philippines - Häfele-Tuason Racing protégé Veli-Matti Kaikkonen scored an impressive triumph highlighting his entry to the elite circle of ace racecar drivers recently in the fifth leg of the 2011 Philippine GT Championship Series at the Clark International Speedway.
From a runner-up finish in the last leg, the Finnish expat raised his game to halt Vincent Floirendo’s streak and score his first season win via a sweep of both the Sprint and Main GT Race with the big support of Häfele, Siemens, Castrol, Vauth & Sagel, Opteam, Grhames Phils., Inc. and Artland Printer Inc.
Even at the start, Kaikkonen posed as a big threat to Floirendo’s domination as he submitted the fastest laptime of two minutes, 9.422 seconds in the qualifying time trials or 1.307 seconds faster than the latter.
With a little more adjustments done by the Tuason Racing crew, his car went off to a blazing start in the Sprint Race and pulled ahead of Floirendo at the turn.
On the next lap, he registered a much faster laptime of 2:08.481 seconds as he built a wide margin from the pack and smoothly coasted to victory, clocking 18:53.965 in the nine-lap race or a far 53.161 seconds ahead of overall runner-up Arnel Carlos.
Even the heavy afternoon rain didn’t stop Kaikkonen. He started last in the reversed-order grid of the Main GT Race but still blazed his way to the top hitting a laptime of 2:12.884 or four seconds faster per lap than the rest.
He wrapped up the 13-lap Main GT race in 29:17.101 to complete his sweep in the GT300 class.
“Kaikkonen has shown big potentials to carry on Tuason Racing’s championship tradition and this win only proved he’s officially in the big league of circuit racing,” said TRS president JP Tuason.
Kaikkonen went a long way since he barged into Philippine Motorsports scene in 2009. A veteran racer who captured the title in the 2001 AIM Concept Car Race Series in Bira, Thailand, he started as a Tuason Racing discovery in the TRS Race of Champions.
Since then, he has been a prominent figure in circuit racing, forging impressive feats in the Philippine Production Car Championship.