Darryl ‘O Young recently shared his insights on his Macau Grand Prix GT Cups 2021 race and win during virtual media interview hosted by CBR Media and Motul.
Starting off, the team, Craft-Bamboo Racing, was talking about their first partnership together with Motul. Darryl said the partnership was kicked off through esports competition. For 2021, the team continue the partnership with the use of Motul 300V on the #95 Mercedes-AMG GT3 where Darryl has a high praise for its performance. He mentioned that the 300V is actually widely available for normal use and the 300V actually work perfectly on his high performance racing car, which uses different gearbox than conventional road car.
Darryl did mentioned for the Macau Grand Prix, he required to get quarantined for 21 days and he proceed to Macau on Thursday at 3am. And on 7am, he planned for a track walk where the track has 6.2km length. After that, he also prepared the race with discussion with the team and engineers. While he did confirmed it was a smooth preparation, Darryl has not raced for a year because of the pandemic.
With that said, Darryl has to fully concentrate like the rest of the competitors for the free practice on Friday morning and qualifying on Friday afternoon. When asked any extra homework was required for the race, Darryl said he has to focus on extra details as every racer has limited time to learn the track during free practice. Darryl also said the team need to make sure the car was setup correctly as every millimeter and centimeter of tuning can affect the cars handling during the race.
When ask how he feel when he got P1 for practice and P2 for qualifying, he joked that anytime when someone qualify second they will not be unhappy but he highlighted that during the qualifying, he was caught with traffic and there were just off by few tenth of seconds. Darryl did find that qualifying at the front row still give him a hope to take the win.
Darryl was questioned on whether his team feel stressful for the weekend, he said everything was going fine until the Race 1 where he had a crash (due to oil leaks from a competitor race car). The team was certainly had an anxiety as they need to fix Darryl’s race car for Race 2.
Darryl also revealed his game plan that Macau Grand Prix is like a sprint race so he just need to have a good start. In Race 1, his competitor in a Porsche get a good start but it was a back and forth race as Darryl and his competitor had a close race until the crash. He didn’t have any full radio system to get any warning regarding one of the car just had an accident on track. Darryl was travelling around 260km/h and touch his brakes, the next thing he gets was a sideway and crashed his car. As the car hit the wall, Darryl knows his race was over because of the heavy impact. While the race was red-flagged and Darryl still manages to keep his second place, he was disappointed because he was worried whether he can continue racing.
Darryl was kind enough to disclose the extend of damage to his race car during the media event. They required to analyse the car by stripping the car first and fortunately, the engine is still in good condition. But the bad news was the chassis is bent on several areas including the chassis leg. Because it was an aluminum chassis, it was hard to re-correct the bend area by pulling. The engineers and mechanics decided to cut of the bent chassis leg off and located a Macau welder during early morning to weld a new chassis leg. After that, engineers and mechanics were rushing to put back the parts and ready for Race 2.
While they have tried to fix the bend chassis, it took some time for the team to put back the parts. As they were almost complete and were to refuel the new radiator’s coolant, the team noticed a leak occurred and has to resort to the old radiator. The team was really anxious to get the car ready for Race 2 and Darryl mentioned due to the pandemic, the team only has 3 mechanics to work during the weekend race. Fortunately for Darryl, his team was laser-focused getting his car back on the grid and never stop working since the damaged car enter to the pitbox.
Darryl also goes on to revealed that the car was not properly set up for Race 2 after the team has finished assembled back the car. He managed to get out from the pits from seconds before the pits are closed and just ready to race when he reached the grid.
Another shocking reveal by Darryl was during on the grid for Race 2, the car has some oil leak and emitting smoke from the car. It turned out to be a steering fluid leak and some fluid is dripping on the exhaust. The official was considering to get the car off the grid but finally decided to allow Darryl to continue race.
For Race 2, Darryl changed his race plan to secure the win. He got off a good start from the grid and quickly get into the first position. From there on, he change his driving style as he know the car was not perfect set up. He decided to reduce his pace on the hilly part of the circuit to increase tyre life. He increase back his lead on the straight end by going flat out. This strategy will annoy his competitor and proven to be working well as he won Race 2.
Darryl was really thankful to his team as he mentioned they really worked non-stop since qualifying until the races ended. The blood, sweat, tears and never gave up has played an important role to Darryl and his Craft-Bamboo Racing team. It was an eye opener as Darryl revealed so much behind the scene during the race. The racing spirit demonstrated by Darryl and his team is fantastic and certainly a story that upcoming race driver should learn from.
Hopefully 2022 will be a better year for racing as Darryl and his team is not done with winning races!
Thanks and credited to Darryl ‘O Young, Craft-Bamboo Racing, CBR Media and Motul. Certain photos are credited to Galen Chan (copyright holder, GC Production Co.) and all the photos does not belong to TrendGrnd thus it is used for fair media usage. Kindly contact us for any removal of the photos.