The Asian Festival of Speed

The Asian Festival of Speed
June 10 - 11
Golden Port Circuit
Jinzhanxiang Beijing
Tel: 8432 0199

SCC's website www.scc-racing.com
AFOS website www.afos.com

Yan Lu, team manager of China's first international racing team, SCC, is a man on a mission. "China needs a racing hero, an international champion," he says, eyes gleaming.

His team is competing in the high profile Porsche Carrera Cup Asia and, like all racing teams everywhere, they aim to win. The Cup sees drivers pit identical porsches against each other over 60 zippy kilometers of bitumen.
The prestigious race is coming to town on the weekend of June 10-11 as part of the Asian Festival of Speed, an annual event guaranteed to unite the speed demons of Beijing together in their love of fast cars and tarmac.
Asia's most talented racing stars and racing teams will converge on the city to compete in the fifth and sixth rounds of this event, which tours Asian cities from March to November every year. Drivers will test their pluck and reflexes in one of the three races held over the weekend, the Asian Touring Car Championship, Formula BMW Asia and the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia. The aim of each round? To accumulate as many points as possible in order to win the whole series.

The SCC team, with Thai driver Charoensukhawatana Nattavude, will be gunning for victory against this year's favorite, Team Jebsen from Hong Kong. The team was born in 2004 when Yan Lu was struck by a sudden realization during China's first Formula 1 race in Shanghai. "I was very excited but the old man next to me was sleeping. That's when I realized I was excited but China wasn't excited," he said. "So I decided to build an international racing team because racing won't become popular until China has an international champion."

With just three months to put his team together before the start of the Porsche Carrera Cup, Yan Lu says he sold his company, his house and some of his cars to raise funds to finance his dream. A few months later, Yan Lu's team made it to the Cup, where they led the competition throughout the early rounds until a broken brake disc brought them unstuck in Shanghai and they finished a close second overall. But win or no win, he's happy to see interest in the sport growing in China.

"A lot of people want to go racing, that's why you get illegal racing on the second ring road," he says. "I tell them don't go illegal racing, come to the legal races and learn more about the sport."