KUALA LUMPUR: After a two-year hiatus, race car driver Jazeman Jaafar made an impressive return to the track by securing a hard-earned podium finish at the Four Hours of Monza on Sunday.
Sharing a Jota Sport prepped Oreca 07 with Indonesia's Sean Gelael, Jazeman finished third in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) LMP2 race in Italy.
The pair, who qualified 11th on Saturday, crossed the finish line 34.420 seconds adrift of race winners Julien Canal, James Allen and William Stevens (Panis Racing).
United Autosports' Jonathan Aberdein, Phil Hanson and Tom Gamble came in a close second (+5.131s). All three podium cars completed 125 laps.
A total of 41 cars across the LMP2, LMP3 and LMGTE classes finished the race.
Jazeman was delighted with his team's performance over the weekend.
"I feel very proud and grateful to achieve this as we are the first all-Asian (driver car) line up in ELMS," said Jazeman.
"This is my first race since all the disruptions caused by Covid-19. With a new teammate, we started off the weekend by settling in with the team and the car.
"The competition is very, very tough, but we put in a good strategy and pulled off good pit stops. It was a team effort, a lot of which people don't see behind the scenes.
"It all paid off, and we managed to finish on the podium after starting from 11th place."
Jazeman added that he felt 'right at home' working with Jota Sport which he had raced for together with Nabil Jeffri and Weiron Tan during the 2018 World Endurance Championship season.
Jazeman had last raced in the Blancpain GT World Challenge Asia series in 2019.
He hopes to race in the remaining two rounds of ELMS at Spa-Francorchamps (Sep 18-19) and Portimao (Oct 23-24).