A difficult weekend at the Songkhla Grand Prix for the Motorist racing department
Last weekend, the Motorist racing department competed in the Songkhla Grand Prix, one of the premier racing events on the Southeast Asian motorsport calendar. Here’s how it went.
Motorist’s resident racing driver, Aiden Chong, donned his helmet and fireproofs to compete in the PT Songkhla Grand Prix, one of the biggest motorsport events in Asia and the final round of the PT Maxnitron Racing Series season. The third running of the event saw over 100 cars and drivers across a variety of classes take to the challenging street circuit in Songkhla, Thailand.
Aiden was entered in the Honda One Make Race (HOMR) category. In this class, all drivers use identical Honda City Hatchback racecars to ensure parity and place the focus on the driver’s skill instead of car advantage.
The HOMR racecar uses a 1-litre turbocharged engine with a 5-speed manual gearbox, which might not be the most powerful drivetrain out there, but it’s still capable of propelling the car to 170km/h before the braking zone at Turn 1.
The #69 car driven by Aiden Chong proudly carried the branding of Motorist Thailand.
Aiden’s outing at the Songkhla Grand Prix was his debut not just in the series, but also his first time driving the Songkhla street circuit and the HOMR car. His learnings from a wet first practice session were all he had to go off of before Race 1, as a boost leak in the second session and a blown engine in the third session called an early end to his practice runs.
An engine issue left both car and driver stricken in the recovery area during the third practice session.
As the engine was not able to be swapped in time for qualifying, Aiden started the first of two races of the weekend from 10th and last place. However, the car failed to start when it came time to leave the dummy grid, resulting in a pit lane start instead, a huge disadvantage due to the layout of the track.
Once the race started, though, he climbed up through the field with pace on par with the front-runners and made his way up to seventh place. However, a crash from another car brought out the safety car, but there was too much debris to be cleared up in time, and the safety car stayed out till the end of the race, spoiling any chances of any further overtakes and cementing a seventh-place finish.
The only pit lane in the world to have a 7-Eleven next to it.
On the plus side, the grid for Race 2 is set based on the fastest lap in Race 1, which meant Aiden would start fifth. However, as the lights went out, the driveshaft broke as soon as the clutch let out. He managed to limp it back to the pits where the team changed the broken driveshaft for a new one, but by then he was three laps down and out of any contention for the podium, a real shame as his lap times in Race 2 were right up there with the leaders.
The other Team Supersonic Singapore drivers, Shane Ang and Kenneth Ho, both finished 4th overall in the Siam GT and Siam Group A classes, respectively. Both drivers also had eventful weekends with mechanical issues as well as a crash for Kenneth in Race 1.
Aiden and the team are aiming to be back on the grid for the 2026 PT Maxnitron Racing Series season, so stay tuned for more action when Motorist goes racing next.
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