Daniel Sarmiento wins at Philippine Off-Road nats

The final round of the Philippine Off-Road Nationals took place in Metro Manila and the race also marked the end of this year’s Summer season in the region. Track conditions were maintained throughout the day to give everyone an equal shot at earning the coveted TQ spot. Some veterans encountered early problems with their Truggies which hurt their qualifying time in order to proceed to the final. With the Christmas tree format in place, racers not in the top 10 had to bump up to secure the last two available slots in order to join the magic 12 car final.

After three rounds of Qualifying, it was 2013 Nitro Buggy National Champion Daniel Sarmiento who came out on top to grab the TQ honor with his new Team C Truggy, followed by Garet Santayana who took the 2nd spot on the grid with veteran racer Justin Neri taking the third spot. 15 year old hot shot driver Daniel Miranda was 5th on the grid followed by Serpent racer Edward Sio. The country’s top female Off-Road racer Shania Yulo was in 6th. The other Truggy racers who made it to the A-Main were Donald Leoy, Dan Savino, AJ Tamayo and Aristotle Alipon. Associated racer Mike Ang along with a very determined Jayson Chua earned their way into the Final after securing their well-deserved bump-ups to round out the top 12 spots.

The 45 minute race would be a gruelling test of nerves for all. From the horn Daniel Sarmiento had a great start and took the holeshot. He began to stretch out a good lead and it seemed like it was now just a question of who would be standing at the podium for 2nd and 3rd. Amazingly, the names Shania Yulo and Daniel Miranda were in 2nd & 3rd respectively. Both youngsters were doing damage at the expense of their more experienced competitors. As the race progressed, it looked like current order would be the final standing for the podium. There was a lot of dicing and crashing from 4th to 12th as the order among them seemed to change with every lap. But with just over 10 minutes remaining, Shania hit a corner hard which proved to be the demise of her race. The result was a DNF but she still managed to finish a respectable 8th. No doubt we will see more success and progress from her in future big races. With this unexpected development, young Daniel Miranda came up to 2nd spot while 3rd now was up for grabs. Donald, Dan and Garet were all in the hunt. Each experienced promising moments only to face engine trouble, steering and clutch issues towards the end of the race. From out of nowhere and with time winding down, AJ Tamayo found his Truggy up to 3rd place. When the final buzzer sounded, Daniel Sarmiento cruised to victory with a trouble free run and near a perfect race. Daniel Miranda finished a well deserved 2nd while AJ Tamayo took home a hard fought 3rd Place.

The congratulations go to Daniel Sarmiento, the 2013 Nitro Truggy National Champion who also took the Nitro Buggy Championship a few weeks before. The organizers would like to thank their proud sponsors for their continued support of off-road racing and the thanks also go to all the racers that participated in this year’s Nationals.

Thanks to Ish Montilla for sending the report.