Summernats Malaysia 2014 Media Announcement - Speech by JP Chin
8th April 2014
Yang Berhormat Dato' Seri Mohamed Nazri bin Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, the Minister of Tourism and Culture Malaysia
Ms Susan Kahwati, Senior Trade & Investment Commissioner of the Australian Trade Commission in Malaysia & Brunei
Mr Russell Avis, General Manager of SummerNats Australia
Yang Berbahagia Datuk Razlan Razali, CEO of Sepang International Circuit
Esteemed members of the Media,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Firstly allow me to thank Yang Berhormat Dato' Seri Mohamed Nazri bin Tan Sri Abdul Aziz, the Minister of Tourism and Culture Malaysia for graciously agreeing to show his support to this Malaysian initiative by being with us here today. We are also grateful for the presence of Ms Susan Kahwati, the Senior Trade Commissioner of the Australian Trade Commission as our distinguished guest. Thank you for your support.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today, with you as witness, we would like to announce the arrival of SummerNats Malaysia!
This marks a new milestone for JPM Motorsport. We see this exciting event as another step to realize our vision and mission, which are:
1. To make motorsports accessible to the enthusiasts by creating relevant opportunities and proper platforms.
2. To build an active and dynamic motorsports lifestyle community across all levels of motorsports through various events, and ultimately, to become a leader through active participation and unique conceptualization of all motorsport related activities.
This vision and mission has driven us towards active participations in all forms of motorsport events, be it as the sport's competitor or as organizer since 1998.
We started with Jet Ski racing, having competed and having won the prestigious Asia Pacific King's Cup Thailand.
We then moved on to racing cars, competing and winning in various races such as the Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race, the Malaysia Super Series and the Asian Touring Car Series. Our notable achievements include us being crowned as Overall Champion of the 2003 Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race, or the MME with TJ Chin becoming the youngest driver ever to win the title.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The year 2006 marked a new milestone for JPM Motorsport. That was when we organized our first ever motorsport event, the JPM Integra Cup Malaysia. The One Make racing series was touted then as the biggest such race series with a total of 25 Honda Integras racing for the season. Our vision and mission was starting to take shape as this series inspired many of its participating competitors to further compete at higher levels in reputable racing events such as the Porsche Carrera Cups and the SUPER GT.
And talking about SUPER GT; we are indeed honored to have had the opportunity to organize and promote the Malaysia round for three consecutive years from 2011 to 2013. We are proud to take credit for having successfully achieved a revival of interest and an increase of spectator attendance in the SUPER GT, which is the fastest Grand Touring car race in the world. We consistently registered record attendances for three years in a row, from 50,000 spectators in 2011, to 76,000 the next year, and finally to an unprecedented 100,000 spectators last year. To add icing to the cake, our Malaysia round was voted as the best organized round for all the three years under our organization, beating all other rounds which were held in various parts of Japan. Most importantly, through the variety of supporting activities we introduced during the SUPER GT weekend, we believe we have successfully converted the SUPER GT from a pure racing event to an excursion event for the whole family to enjoy.
Ladies and gentlemen,
With that success behind us, we owe it to the public to bring more automotive related activities for the whole family. That was when we discovered that the SummerNats will be perfect for that vision. SummerNats, or Summer Nationals as introduced by Mr Russell has been the pinnacle of automotive event in Australia. This event is an annual showcase of many enthusiast unrivalled passion in personalizing their motor vehicles. We are glad to take this opportunity to announce that in this first edition of SummerNats Malaysia we would be working to ship in not 1, but 8 of the competition winning cars from SummerNats Australia to Malaysia for the public's viewing.
SummerNats Malaysia, which will be held on our National day, would be our way to gather the automotive enthusiasts to celebrate Merdeka day in a way they would want it to be. And what better way to do this other than having it at the Sepang International Circuit, where the customary annual Merdeka Millennium Endurance race will be held. As the former champions of the MME, we would love to see more people at the track during the 12 hour endurance race, and we believe the SummerNats Malaysia will contribute towards taking the MME to a higher level. By having it this way, our SummerNats visitors will have a chance to watch a 12-hour endurance race from the Grandstand, and the MME participants will have a surprise increase in spectators.
So what really is SummerNats Malaysia? Our vision is to make SummerNats Malaysia the biggest Automotive event in Malaysia and in ASEAN. For this reason, we have lined up many activities for the enjoyment of the whole family. Some key highlights are as follows:
1. SummerNats Street Machine parade, where you will see the customary Muscle Cars, Classic Cars, Supercars and Sports car parade. For the Malaysia edition, we will expand the lineup to include motorcycles of all types, be it a chopper, a superbike, a sports bike or even popular bikes such as the Vespa to participate in a cruising parade in and outside of the Sepang Circuit.
2. SummerNats Judging Pavilion, where cars and bikes alike will compete for prizes in 12 predetermined categories. We believe this competition is of highest quality, as we would have a panel of reputable judges from Australia and from Malaysia through partners such as Tom's Stickers to judge these participating machines. We expect hundreds, if not thousands of participants waiting to be judged on their passion and creativity.
3. SummerNats Burnout! Well, a teaser of it would be demonstrated later, so it's better seen than said. We plan for a much bigger burnout showcase involving all sorts of cars and bikes.
4. Biggest Car, Biggest Bike and even Biggest Bicycle gathering! We aim to break our own record of 2000 bikes and 608 super and performance cars gathered on the Sepang circuit during the 2013 and 2012 SUPER GT weekends. And for 2014, we hope to create another Malaysia book of record entry with the biggest bicycle gathering on Merdeka Day. Our target is to have 10,000 cyclists gathered and enjoyed a sighting lap on the Sepang race circuit.
5. UltraRacing Gymkhana! For those intending to go beyond just admiring those gorgeous machines, they can be part of the action by participating in a gymkhana organized by Ultra Racing. It's great fun and yet a very intense experience.
6. Motorshow! A crowd favorite if anything from our experience in SUPER GT has taught us. Once again, we aim to have all reputable car and motorcycle brands in the show. We hope the exhibitors will make a few sales over the weekend, just like some of them did in our SUPER GT motorshows. For those who already owned the vehicles they love, we plan to have an after market zone!
7. An infotainment zone. In SummerNats Malaysia, we will introduce a fun-filled zone with an objective of educating the public about automotive, ranging from safety related issue to guides and advice on personalization via fun activities such as talk show by reputable hosts, product demo and crowd engaging competition.
All the automotive related activities will be complemented by an array of entertaining zones for the ladies and the children as well with activities such as Bazaar, food festival and Kids Zone, making the event suitable for the whole family.
Ladies and gentlemen,
During the three years of the SUPER GT, we had successfully attracted foreign spectators especially from Japan. With SummerNats, it will open a whole new automotive related tourist market, this time from Australia and from neighboring countries. As compared to the Japanese flavored SUPER GT event, the SummerNats will bring the Australian and the American flavors. Many of us in Malaysia and ASEAN countries have higher affiliation with the Australian and American flavor of automotive affection, either through our experiences during our study years or even through Hollywood movies. As you walk around our JPM Museo today, for many of us, the small preview of the vehicles involved in SummerNats today is already bringing fond memories of our younger college days. With aggressive promotion and support, we are confident that the annual SummerNats Malaysia will be a prominent event on the tourism calendar for Malaysia. We are very fortunate to have the inaugural SummerNats Malaysia during the Visit Malaysia Year 2014.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I guess I have not delivered a speech today, but rather I have presented a preview on what SummerNats Malaysia is all about. I hope you will agree with me that it will be an exciting and fun-filled Merdeka weekend at the SummerNats. It is only four months away and we have lots of tasks ahead of us to make Summernat Malaysia a reality. We would really appreciate all the support we can get, especially from our friends from the media. Only with your support can we get the words out to corporate participants and to the public to join us for the Merdeka Celebration in Summernats Malaysia.
Thank you, and I hope to see all of in Summernats Malaysia on Merdeka weekend in Sepang!