SEAOIL karter Gabriel “Gabe” Tayao Cabrera ended the 2015 race year with a big bang after bagging a podium finish at the Asian Karting Open Championships in Macau.
Also backed by Gold’s Gym, DC and Media Magic, the 15-year-old Makati Hope Christian School student emerged a hero for his dramatic third-place win in the X30 Division, making him the first-ever Filipino to achieve the feat in the class.
Tayao Cabrera was the second youngest driver of the series’ largest class with 41 seasoned drivers from Macau, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
Initially using engines provided by a foreign supplier, Tayao Cabrera was besieged with mechanical problems from the time trials to the heats that caused him to fall far back in the grid.
Hopes for a podium win was kept alive after AUTS Racing’s Indy Villalon—a former mentor of Tayao Cabrera, came to the rescue by providing a brand-new engine.
Escaping elimination by a narrow margin, Tayao Cabrera barely made it to the pre-final grid of 36 drivers.
Gaining new fans, the crowd went wild seeing Tayao Cabrera work his way up from 28th to 11th in the pre-finals, overtaking 17 drivers in the 18-lap event.
The excitement escalated in the 24-lap finals as Tayao Cabrera further weaved his way up to third. The Philippines’ brightest racing star capped an intense battle by clocking the fastest time—49.953 in the finals, beating the record previously set by the champion in the pre-finals.
“This is a wonderful ending to a very challenging year after winning in Malaysia and Thailand last month. Likewise, I’m happy to win the series’ 1st runner-up overall honors despite not racing in the first leg since I had single-seater commitments with Formula BMW,” said Tayao Cabrera.
Also bagging the Karter of the Year title for this race year, Tayao Cabrera also set another record by being the youngest in Philippine motorsports history to receive the country’s highest honor for karting.