Competitors in the lower classes of Sepang’s prestigious 12-hour Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race 2008 (MME) will be using race tyres provided by Silverstone, which is Official Tyres for the event.

“We are proud to announce that Silverstone Tyres has agreed to be the Official Tyre Provider for Class B and C for this year’s MME, which will be held at Sepang Circuit from August 28 to 30,” said SIC Press Officer Azhar Ghazali.

“With the appointment of Silverstone Tyres as our sponsor, the race tyres would be provided to participants at subsidized prices for both the dry and wet tyres. Tyre selection for Class A and the open class remain free,” Azhar announced in a statement.

Hailed as Asia’s Biggest Race, the MME would be competed in four classes with cars between 1601cc and 1900cc grouped in Class B and those below 1600cc competing in Class C. Class A would group production cars above 1900cc and the open class would witness the battle of the modified production cars irrespective of their engine capacity.

Entering its ninth edition this year, the MME, which is the only one of two 12-hour car endurance races in the world, has traditionally attracted top drivers including former winners of the Le Mans 24-hour Endurance Race as well as those who had competed in the Japan Super GT, Australia V8 Series and the famous Nurburgring 24-hour race.

The race last year was won by Hong Leong Kencana Racing Team, which featured Le Mans driver Lars Nielsen, Porsche test driver Sven Herberger and Malaysian Mokhzani Mahathir in a Porsche GT3 RSR race car.

“As always, we have received tremendous response from the racing fraternity especially from the international drivers and racing teams. In fact, the international entries had always been increasing every year,” Azhar said.

According to him, it was with that increase in international entries that SIC decided on prominent changes to the race regulations this year including to increase the number of qualifiers from Class A and the open class to 20 each this year as compared to a combined 25 cars from the two classes.

“The race gets faster and faster every year with more and more supercars coming here to race. We decided to reduce the number of entries from Class B and C in the interest of safety,” Azhar said.

While August 28 has been set for the Official Free Practice, qualifying would be held on August 29 with the race to be flagged off at 11am on Saturday, August 30.

The circuit license issued by the Federation of International Automobile (FIA) - world’s governing motorsport body - had set a maximum of only 77 cars for a rolling start at Sepang Circuit in the interest of safety.

Qualifying times would be calculated based on a combined time of all three drivers; and Class B and C would have 19 and 18 qualifiers respectively for the actual race.

The last day for submission of entries had been set for August 16.