Fellow my-KARTers and Tail Happy Racing teammates Yusnee, Azlan and I managed to get some invitations to the Perdana Suite for round 5 of the A1 GP at Sepang on 20 November 2005.
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Datuk Mokhzani Mahathir and SIC for extending the invitation to us. We thoroughly enjoyed the hospitality and more importantly the race.
And what an excellent race it was. Again, Team Malaysia demonstrated that they had the potential to be up there with the best by finishing 8th and 5th in the sprint and feature races, respectively. With this consistent finish, Malaysia is now joint 6th in the A1 GP championship after 5 rounds.
Both Fairuz and Alex drove strong races, and especially Alex despite experiencing another problematic pitstop which lost Team Malaysia about 10 secs and potentially 4th place. Alex managed to steal 5th from Team New Zealand on the very last lap drawing cheers from the 10,000 crowd.
Shame that the crowd was not as is should be given the size of the grand stands. It would have been great had their been more hype in the media weeks prior to the race. Sadly, the truth is that there was very little coverage in the local papers. The Star had only bothered to allocate a small panel to report the goings on of the weekend. In other countries there would have been pull out sections.
As it turned out, the Malaysian round of the World Cup of Racing was probably the best race of the season so far. There were battles through all the positions. And the fact that tyre wear was a factor made it even more exciting. Alex and Fairuz both had several sideways moments as they struggled for tyre grip.
The Malaysian weather also made a cameo appearance 4 laps from the end of the race to make things even more interesting.
Aside from enjoying the race, Yusnee did a lot of hard selling for my-KART promoting the round 10 final race to every personality in the Perdana Suite including TV personality Sarimah Ibrahim, Datuk Azman Yahaya, Aminuddin Omar, and Maznah Zolkifli.
All I can say is what a fantastic race and event it was. Let’s hope there will be more corporate sponsorship and support for our own team in the A1 GP. Malaysia is in sixth, and the best Asian. We only need more experience and funds.