Teamwork’s Paul Poon piloted his Suncity Group RCZ to his third consecutive podium in the CTM Macau Touring Car 1.6T Class.
Teamwork came to the Macau GP race week with a dreadful news for the TCR squat in the Chinese Racing Cup. Due to late arrival of the containers for Teamwork’s VW Golf TCRs as well as a few other competitors from TCR China, the Macau GP committee didn’t permit these late arrivals to take part in the Macau GP. Therefore the race was over before it started for Alex Hui, Andrew Lo, Sunny Wong, and Samuel Hsieh.
On the bright side, the Suncity RCZ piloted by Paul Poon was on the pace in the CTM Macau Touring Car Cup. The Six-time event winner went the fastest by more than a second in the double red-flagged practice session. While Samson Fung and Alex Fung were unable to set meaningful times because of the red flags interference and traffic.
It was an intense battle for pole position in qualifying between Teamwork’s Paul Poon and local rival Filipe De Souza. The two changed leads for a few times until the very late part of the session, when Poon set a pole lap time 0.3seconds faster than Souza as he was pitting in. Teamwork’s Alex Fung and Samson Fung also showed good pace on P4&5.
New for this year for the CTM Macau Touring Car Cup was that the ‘1.6T’ and ‘Over 1950cc’ were combined into one main race. Sunday morning race started on the cold and wet circuit, and this certainly was a disadvantage for Teamwork’s Suncity Group RCZ because they were FWD while many competitors were AWD. Paul Poon immediately lost a few positions at the rolling start drag race, but hold on to his lead in the 1.6T class. Unfortunately for Samson Fung and Alex Fung they both retired early due to mechanical failure on Lap 3 and an accident at the Lisboa on lap 6, leaving Poon the only Teamwork car on the circuit. Main local rival Filipe De Souza also retired on Lap 4. Brilliant battle for the 1.6T-class lead continued between Paul Poon and J. Badaraco, but team’s choice of wet tires weren’t at their best at that level of wetness, and he lost the lead in lap 7 up on the hill. Once the track dried up a little, Paul was able to regain the pace. But in lap 10 the race was cut short with 2 laps to go because 2 accidents almost happened simultaneously and that eliminated any chance for Poon to reclaim the lead and had to settle with a 2nd place trophy, which is his third consecutive podium finishes in the past three years.
“I have tried my best, and I am happy with the results and more importantly everyone is safe.” Paul Poon continues, “The track was very slippery and I couldn’t even go straight because of the aquaplaning. I simply didn’t have the traction I needed on braking neither.”
