Cebu racers in focus as Vios Cup holds first leg out of Luzon

Race director JP Tuason (left) joins members of Team Toyota Cebu Jette Calderon, Sean Velasco, Lord Seno and Oscar Suarez during the press conference at the Marco Polo Plaza Cebu. PHOTO: CHRISTIAN MANINGO

While homecourt advantage may be a huge edge for teams in other sports, the same can’t be said in motorsports.

At least not for Team Toyota Cebu, which will be spearheading the Cebuano charge in the upcoming 2015 Vios Cup Cebu leg this May 16 and 17 at the South Road Properties (SRP) in Cebu City.

Though the team will be racing in a track Cebuanos are familiar with,  they think it won’t be that much of an advantage at all.

Multititled Cebuano racer Lord Seno, one of five members of Team Toyota Cebu that will go up against some of the best teams in the country, said that even if he is used to passing through the South Coastal Road at the SRP,  he doesn’t do it to race.

“We racers, we don’t break the law in the SRP,” said Seno, also a motoring editor of one of the local dailies in Cebu. “We drive slow at the SRP so nobody really knows the track that well.”

The track will be a 2.2-kilometer circuit along a stretch of road near the Sugbu Building. According to race director JP Tuason, it will be a medium- to high-speed track that will feature several chicanes.

So if familiarity with the track is to be the basis, nobody really has a clear advantage, Seno said.

“We have a small advantage psychologically since the race will be here in Cebu,” Seno said. “But just a little.”

And since it is a one-make race featuring Toyota’s best-selling vehicle in the Philippines—the Vios subcompact sedan, there’s also no advantage whatsoever on the technical side.

All participants will be racing the same Toyota Racing Development (TRD)-powered, race-ready  Vios cars, which means no modification is needed and allowed. Cars will be checked by experts before the race.

If there are keys to winning, Seno said it would be experience and skill.

And he’s pretty much confident the team, which also has multititled karter Jette Calderon, Sean Velasco, Harold Ong and Oscar Suarez, has both.

He said the young ones

—Calderon and Velasco—are likely to land in podium finishes owing to their impressive karting skills.

“My advantage is that I’ve been racing for a while already,” the 18-year-old Calderon said. “I already have the craft and I can adapt with my car easily because I’ve been driving since I was 4 years old,” added Calderon, a many-time Kartzone Karter of the Year.

As for Seno, he said he is still aiming for a decent spot among the Top 10.

“Realistically, I’ve been racing for like almost 23 years, so I’ve seen how my batchmates in karting fared in circuit racing. Most of them reached the Top 10 so it’s safe to say that I can land in the Top 10,” said Seno, who is a well-known Cebuano racer who has won titles in karting, drag racing and slalom racing.