The Racing Legends

Part7

THE Ventura, Ayuyao and Luna families had been in the forefront of motor sports since Dodjie Laurel’s time when the Macau GP winner promoted the exciting sport in the 1960s. Their succeeding generation of kids also continued the tradition, with some still active today wearing the organizers’ hat. I hope you all saw it last week in my column.

This week, we will give credit to two more families that have given their time, effort and resources to help bring our passion to where it is supposed to be. Let’s start with a man who pushed his dreams to develop an international series originating from local shores.

Ed Peña

I first met Ed when we formed the Philippine International Karting Association (PIKA) in 1986. After the turmoil of the People Power Revolution, the original karting organizers indicated they would not run kart races anymore, so we had to do it on our own. That gave rise to PIKA, and we had the businessman racer and track owner Johnny Tan and more enthusiasts joining us. This gave karting a new lease on life.

Along with his family and friends, Ed was a karter before. And he was very eager to get karting out of the JRC Kartway and bring it closer to the people. His first project was to bring karting to Luneta, getting San Miguel Corp. to support it in December 1986. It was a great event, even inspiring me to be an organizer instead of just being a racer in karting events.

After that, Ed took a back seat when his son Dado was born in 1987. When local motor sports started to boom in the early 2000s, Ed hatched a plan to create a singleseater, regional championship to help Filipinos get to the top. His involvement wasn’t all about racing, but Ed hoped he could emulate the Formula One business model and earn from it. The series he made was called the Asian Formula 3 (AF3) Championship, which took off in 2002.

Ed worked hard to get the FIA (International Automobile Federation) to support the series and allow him to go international. Teams that would like to join would have to buy franchises, and franchise holders would be part of the AF3 board. The prestigious formula series was brought to China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan and our local shores.

There was tremendous interest from sponsors and participants when it was launched. Foreign drivers started to join, including racing expat Mark Goddard who won the first year of the series. Mark now heads Eurasia Motorsport Team that gave the young Cebuano racer Daniel Miranda this year’s championship in the TCR Asia’s Asian Drivers class.

I was able to join the AF3 Championship in 2003 after competing in

2002 in the Asian Formula 2000 series that we almost won. That’s another story but this time in AF3, we ran with the Shell Team of my old karting teammate and batchmate in De La Salle University, Pepon Marave.

Right from the start of the season, it was decided that we should drive the old 1998 F3 Pepon drove in the lower Promotions Class. Even though it was the older than the Premiere Class’ 2002 models, we were able to take pole position in Subic for the first round. We ended up winning two Promotions Class races and had a great battle with Jojo Silverio in the final race.

The budget that we got from sponsors wasn’t enough though, and we had to stop after only three races. The team also started to detune its engines to prolong its serviceable life so we never got back to the same form we had in Subic.

Nevertheless, the AF3 series was truly a great platform for our drivers to compete against the other racers in the region. Unfortunately, Peña couldn’t sustain it for a long time without the support of the governments in the region and the FIA. I believe it was way ahead of its time. FIA started the Formula 4 Southeast Asian series years later, which was essentially the same as the AF3.

The Pastor Family

The tragic loss of Enzo Pastor etched the Pastor family into the pillars of Philippine motor sports. Enzo was brutally murdered while he was driving his tow truck, which had his V8 Supercar on board, in 2014. The gunman was caught and confessed to his wrongdoing. The worst part was that the mastermind was a person linked to Enzo’s wife, according to the Pastor family.

Enzo’s life was cut way too short in a manner that should never happen to anyone. We lost a great driver that had won races in touring car, Formulas and other race events. Enzo also organized an event called Circuit Showdown and brought new blood into the fold. He also trained a lot of these participants personally and will never be forgotten by his students.

The head of the family, Tom, was also an avid racer, but he was more a devoted dad/manager to his children who all loved racing! The other sons we met were Carlo and Don. We were able to race with Carlo in our National Production Touring Car Championship in 1998 when we were with Hyundai. Those were crazy times and his brother Don took the Production Touring championship later on, which proved he had great skills in his genes.

Tom is still trying to revive the V8 Supercar Championship, and we wish him well.

There are more legends we will feature from other racing disciplines next week. Godspeed!