Eurasia Motorsport fielded its #33 Ligier JS P2 for the final round of Asian Le Mans Series at the Sepang International Circuit Malaysia on Sunday (4 February 2018) and backed up Saturday’s spectacular pole position with a fine third-place finish, having led the race for a large portion of the four-hour race.
An impressive – if inexperienced LMP2 line-up of drivers – including local hero Nabil Jeffri, Estonian Marko Asmer and Australian Jake Parsons offered much promise and each soon got to grips with the car and track through practice and qualifying to see the team take a surprise pole position, with local driver Jeffri, with support from the Sepang International Circuit for this weekend’s event, taking the top honours.
Asmer took the start, his second in the series having raced at Fuji Speedway for the team, but a slow start saw the former F3 star saw him initially lose positions to DC Racing and the Viper Niza Racing entry. However, a well-worked strategy saw Eurasia retake the lead during the first pitstop sequence with Jeffri who took over the car from Asmer, leading at the half-way point.
Having enjoyed the run at the front of the field, yellow flags closed the field up and brought the LMP2 pack together as Jake Parsons took over for the third stint; something of a formidable task given it was his first time competing at this level. Parsons battled on, but the humidity and heat of the Sepang Circuit proved to be a tough challenge for him as he dropped to fourth position following a quick spin before handing back over to Asmer.
However, a late routine pitstop for the DC Racing team proved to be far from it as the car was pushed back into the garage with a technical issue, leaving a hard pushing Asmer to bring the Eurasia Ligier back into the podium positions where it remained at the chequered flag.
“With the agreement to run these drivers coming together very late in the day and given the limited experience of the car that they have had between them, they did an excellent job all weekend,” said team principal Mark Goddard. “We led for large portions of the race which was probably unexpected – despite our pole position – but a well-deserved result and it’s nice to see with both Nabil and Jake showing so well. Jake was suffering with the conditions but it was his first experience in the LMP2 but to that point had excellent pace and played his part in achieving the result.”
Eurasia now begin to focus in earnest on the 2018 racing programme in single seaters, GT3 and Prototypes across the Asian region in what promises to be an exciting and diverse season. Announcements of this programme will follow soon.
