Orido and Nob's One-Two Z4 Punch in MME 2009

Starting at 1130am on 8 August 2009, Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race 2009, the tenth edition of Malaysia's premier 12 hour endurance race saw 46 entrants. 15 in the Open Class, 10 in Class A1 and 19 in Class A2.

Production supercars goes into A1 whereas production sports and saloon cars falls into A2.

17 cars did not finish the race with the last finishing car completing only 140 laps. This will serve as a point of reference as you digest the winning teams' laps completion shortly.

The twin Z4s fielded by Team Petronas Syntium dominated the Open Class. No.28 piloted by the trio of Manabu Orido, Tatsuya Kataoka and Johan Adzmi overtook their team mates Nobuteru Taniguchi, M. Yanagida and F. Hairuman with less than 20 minutes remaining to snatch the championship. The second-placed No.15 car suffered a stroke of bad luck with a puncture late in the race.

Both Z4s did 305 laps, with Orido's car completing the race in 11:55:31.416 and Nob's car less than a minute behind at 11:56:21.028.


In third place with 300 laps was last year’s champion team Porsche Club Singapore (No. 11) Mok Weng Sun, Darryl Hayden O'Young and Craig George Baird who made a big comeback after starting the race from the last spot on the starting grid. The 911 GT3 also posted the second fastest timing of the day with a smoking 2:08.239 lap.

Class A1 was won by Team Fugazi Racing, with their distinctive No.9 Radical SR8 machine driven by Alex Yoong, Wira Dani and Faizal Zelman. The US-made race car had a minor drama in the final 30 minutes with the starter not firing up, forcing the team to pit in for about eight minutes for a replacement starter. The team completed a total of 284 laps with a best time of 2:11.151 and were one lap ahead of the second placed J’s Racing Labs Honda S2000.

The Drift King was there piloting the No.64 S2000, adding to the delight of JDM fans. Together with teammates, J.Umemoto and H.Kubota, Keiichi Tsuchiya completed 277 laps and had a best time of 2:27.263, which is a good 16 seconds down on the Radical’s best lap. The Honda roadster is a fantastic machine but isn't enough to beat the barely road legal Nürburgring record holder of 6 minutes 55 seconds that is the SR8. One must also wonder why the S2000 is classified as Class A1 in the 'production supercar' category...

And finally in class A2 winner is Team Type R Racing's Integra DC5 No.21 driven by Wong Yew Choong, Soh Kee Koon and Lai Wee Sing, finishing the race with 278 laps under their belt and a best time of 2:27.941.

So once again, NA cars dominated endurance racing (at least in our local scene) and the time to beat for Sepang-crazy S2000 and DC5 Singaporean/Malaysian drivers are at the 2:27 mark!

I'll finish off with this candid shot of Keiichi horsing around at the end of the race while his kōhais (juniors) Nob and Orido posed behind dutifully for photo-taking!

Full timesheet below for those big on statistics!

Credits: Zerotohundred.com, Fugazi Racing and Andy Go