Thong secures final win at TCR Asia Challenge

Hong Kong driver Shaun Thong secured victory in the final race of the TCR Asia Challenge event at the Macau Grand Prix this weekend.

After a qualifying session in which he took the pole position on Friday in a very interesting race with fellow Hong Kong racer Lo Sze Ho, Thong managed to recover from a challenging race from which he was forced to withdraw after a series of incidents.

Starting from the ninth position on the grid in the last race of the weekend, Thong initiated a brilliant recovery.

He had already surged to fifth place at Lisboa Bend on the first lap and quickly moved up.

At the end of Lap 1 or 9, he was fourth. Once again at Lisboa Bend, he executed an impressive overtake on the inside turn, moving into second place behind Li Ka Hei in an Audi RS3 LMS.

With Thong constantly putting Li to the test at the braking zone to Lisboa, and with five laps to go, a series of crashes led the race to a Safety Car period at the precise time that Thong passed Li.

More problems emerged on the final lap as the Safety Car pulled into the pits, with a multicar crash at the fast Mandarin Bend.

Number 35 Lam Ka Chun lost control on the exit of the bend and hit the barriers, crossing the track. He collided with drivers who could not avoid the crash, including Ryan Wong and Cheong Chi On and, later, Wong Kiang Kuan who also could not avoid Cheong’s car. A major pile-up at the Mandarin Bend forced race control to red flag the event. Thong was declared the winner in his Honda Civic FK7.

Li secured second place in the Audi, and Lo, another Hong Kong racer, placed third in the Hyundai Elantra N TCR.

Lo also finished first in the race 1 event earlier that day.

At the press conference, Thong expressed his joy at the win, noting that it marked his return to the Macau race track after a decade-long absence.

The previous day, Thong had noted that although he had raced in Macau before, the track felt different to him and he had to relearn it.

“The track felt new to me. It felt like I had never been here before, so I’m learning it like it’s a new track. There’s a lot to learn and I’m very happy to extract what I have from the car.”

Thong’s previous racing experience in Macau dates back to 2013 at the event’s 60th anniversary, when he was at the wheel of a Formula Master car, an open-wheel junior series. This is a very different vehicle from the TCR car Thong drove to win the Macau GP race, or the larger GT cars that he has driven in recent years.