Toyota holds Vios Autocross Challenge
Celebrities, influencers, car clubs and media go head to head
Toyota Motor Philippines has changed things up a bit for local motorsports fans, especially those of you who follow the yearly Toyota Vios Cup. This year, they’re calling it the Vios Racing Festival, which now is composed of two parts, the Vios Circuit Championship and the Vios Auto Cross Challenge.
The Vios Autocross Challenge is a competition where competitors navigate through a short winding track / obstacle course one at a time, with the aim of completing the course with the shortest lap time possible. This course is safer than a full on race, especially between newbie
competitors. Despite the lower speeds, it’s still an enjoyable, fast-paced competition where driving precision counts for more than speed. The organizers have made sure to keep things interesting with two tracks being a mirror image of each other and a painful 2 second penalty for drivers who knock over pylons. The best thing about autocross is you can use your daily driver to compete.
Last April 28th, 2019, Toyota Motor Philippines held its first Vios Autocross Challenge at the Mall of Asia Open Grounds to kick off its Vios Racing Festival. It was a fun Sunday of precision driving. It was a long hot day, with long lists of hopefuls getting eliminated one by one either by times that were not fast enough, by knocking down pylons, or getting lost on the course. Yes it can get confusing under stress of time and speed.
For those who missed it, here are the results of the first Vios Autocross Challenge. In the Celebrity Class, the fastest female was Gretchen Ho with her fastest time of 1:14.77, putting her in third place. Fabio Ide was just a little faster at second place with his time of 1:14.10. The top spot went to Troy Montero, who’s fastest time was 1:10.63.
In the Influencers Class, Klea Pineda came in third place with a time of 1:23.17. Karl Gabriel came in second place with a time of 1:20.95. Reph Bangsil came in first place with a time of 1:17.06 on the course.
The Car Club Class was the most fun to watch as they had the most participants, used
their own vehicles for the first part, but got to use the tricked out all-new Vios Race car in the finals. They started off thirty strong, but the third fastest was Daryl Brady with a time of 1:12.47, coming in a very close second was Michael Scott Carbonell with 1:12.23. The fastest of the car club competitors was Carlos Iñigo Anton with a time of 1:11.13.
Of course what local motorsport event wouldn’t be complete with a Media division? Eggay Quesada of AutocarPH had the third fastest time of 1:17.34. Jerald M. Valdez’ fastest time of 1:15.00 put him in second place. The top media driver was Autoindustriya.com’s Jose Luis Altoveros with 1:12.63.
If you missed this, or can’t get enough of Toyota’s motorsports action, there’s more coming up in June at the Clark International Speedway for the second part of the Vios Racing Festival. See you there!