THE second race meet of the 2013 season, the Rubis Energy Seaboard Marine Caribbean Invasion; was launched last Friday at the Sports Development Foundation office in Kingston.

It is divided into two sections — the local section and the Caribbean section or the (CMRC) Caribbean Motor Racing Championship.

President of the Jamaica Race Drivers’ Club (JRDC) Chris McFarlane announced that the competing countries for this meet will be Guyana, Barbados, Cayman, Jamaica and Suriname, which is entering for the first time.

He said that Jamaica had put together the strongest team ever for the CMRC races, to begin Jamaica’s title defence of its champion country status. They are defending champion driver David Summerbell Jr, Doug Gore, Peter Rae, Andre Anderson, Chris Campbell and George Bayley in Group Four, Kyle Gregg and Alan Chen in Group TwoB, and Sebastien Rae and Natasha Chang in Group TwoA. He said that Chang is the first female driver to represent Jamaica in the Caribbean championship.

Barbados will be represented by Mark and Kurt Thompson in Group TwoB and Group TwoA, respectively, while Doug and Mark Maloney will take charge of Group Four. Guyana, with six cars, will see Harold Hopkinson and John Josephs in the Group TwoB and Saheed Assan and Afraz Ali in Group TwoA, and Andrew King and Kevin Jeffrey in Group Four. Cayman will have Gary Barrett in Group TwoA, while first- timer Suriname will be represented by Oliver Tjin Liep Shie in Group TwoB in a Honda Civic.

The overseas cars came in last Monday courtesy of CMRC sponsor Seaboard Marine. The other meets in the series will run in Barbados in September and Guyana in November.

Defending champion David ‘King’ Summerbell, who spoke at the launch, said that his team had made the required adjustments to his Mitsubishi Evolution and will be ready on race day. Chang, on the other hand, had made no changes but was ready for the challenge as well as to travel to the other countries to take on the region’s drivers.

Immediate past president Marck Carey also spoke at the launch, saying that his focus had changed and he will be ready to take the field at the meet.

McFarlane spoke to other aspects of the meet, while announcing that Bounty Killer would lead the entertainment charge. Additionally, the Go Carters will be on the track. Juliet Cuthbert will be taking to the track as well in McFarlane’s car in the Bracket 45 street car section.

He also spoke to improvements at the track, including work on Corner One for better run-off, Corner Six for better visibility, better location of some of the marshalls, as well as parking adjustments to allow for shorter exit time from the track.

Michelle Marks, director of marketing and sales at Seaboard Marine spoke of her company’s ongoing endorsement of the event, while indicating that her company was more than pleased to sponsor the CMRC as it provides an opportunity to link its customers right across the Caribbean. She also said that Seaboard Marine was pleased with the improvement to the track, as well as the standard of the event. Seaboard Marine ships the cars to the competing host countries of Barbados, Guyana, Cayman, Suriname and Jamaica.

Event title sponsor who was represented by Robert Gibbs of Rubis Energy reaffirmed his company’s continued commitment to JRDC.

The sponsors for this race meet are Rubis Energy, Seaboard Marine, Total, Jamaica Observer, Power 106, Music 99, Klas Sports Radio and Irie FM.