racing

22 December 200524 April 2017

Piquet on Mansell – best F1-related news of the day

For those of you who followed F1 since the late 80s, you would be familiar with the titanic battles between the legends of F1 in the 80s/90s: Prost vs Senna vs Mansell vs Piquet. Those were iconic times in F1’s 60 year history. That was the time that real rivalry in F1 was all about. Between them, these four drivers have won 11 F1 World Drivers Championships, and won countless races. By comparison, the now Great Michael Schumacher has won 7 WDCs in is own right… an amazing achievement… but Schumi has been relatively untroubled by others due largely to the dominance of his Ferrari team (and a unthreatening teammate) and due to the uncompetitive position of his championship rivals in a number of years. So many F1 fans who went through the 80s would still look back to the golden rivalry between the fantastic quartet. Till today, the rivalry still burns…

No love lost there then…

_21/12/2005

Nelson Piquet never made any secret of his feelings towards drivers he disliked, and there were one or two of them, most notably Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell.

Talking to our friend Jorge Girão at Sport Motores, the three-time World Champion made it crystal clear that he remains unimpressed with Mansell, who was his teammate at Williams for two glorious seasons in 1986 and 1987, during which time we witnessed many epic battles, not least the sensational fight at Silverstone in ’87.

“I tried to make a war inside the team to divide it,” admits the Brazilian, “because everything I tested and everything I developed in the car he (Mansell) would pick for himself. It was because of this that I made a war inside the team to try to win the Championship and it worked.

“Nigel was fast,” he added, “but he didn’t know how to set up a car, he wasn’t very clever, was very aggressive. But he was a no-brain.”

And they say that time heals.

Article from Pitpass (http://www.pitpass.com): http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpass_news_item.php?fes_art_id=26767

Published: 21/12/2005
Copyright © Pitpass 2002 – 2005. All rights reserved.

12 December 200524 April 2017

my-KART championship – what a tough year!

Saturday 10th December 2005 was a culmination of a tough year in the my-kart K2 championship. The competition is truly getting tougher and tougher each year. But one solitary win and 5 podium finishes was enough for me to retain the K2 championship for the second year and maintain my 3rd my-kart overall championship.

To top this off, my team -Tail Happy Racing- also won the 2005 my-kart Mega Enduro Series.

2005 was also a very busy year in addition to racing. my-kart held three Foundation Conferences to start working on plans for my-kart to build the foundation for stimulating growth in the Malaysian motorsport industry (foundations #1, #2 & #3). Various initiatives were launched and alliances were made with established figures in the local motorsport industry.

In addition to this, my-kart held its first annual function on Saturday the 10th Dec which was attended by over 60 drivers and their better halves. The event was also graced by Aminuddin Omar -President of the Porsche Club of Malaysia, and also the 2005 Malaysian Super Series Champion. Present too were members of the local car magazines such as Faizal of Torque, Al Bakri and Yogen of Carma.

Read my full round 10/2005 event report at my-kart.org:

I am very happy the way 2005 turned out for my-kart. To this end, I’d like to thank my co-founder Azlan, members of the club protem committee, Naza & Wei Li for setting up the organisation structures, all the volunteers who had helped out during the year full of events and of course all the members and participants in our races.

2006 will be a more eventful year for my-kart with 10 more K2 and K3 races, 6 mega enduros and a few more Foundation Conferences. The full calendar can be found here.

Come join me in this journey towards building racing talent for the country by laying down the foundations for popularising grassroots motorsport in Malaysia.

Forza my-KART!

2 December 200524 April 2017

Jacques Villeneuve stays with BMW Sauber F1

Jacques Villeneuve & Sauber - 2005 pic 1

A few days ago I read with great happiness that BMW Sauber F1 has confirmed 1997 World F1 Champion, Jacques Villeneuve as their driver alongside Nick Heidfeld.

The thing about Jacques is that his is a career that promised so much so early on, yet failed to deliver due to bad career choices at BAR which in my mind basically drained him of the hunger that so propelled him to second in his rookie year and world champ in the following year.

The Villeneuve name is to me one name that evokes alot of passion for racing. Jacques’ dad, Gilles was perhaps the most loved Ferrari hero since Tazio Nuvolari. Enzo Ferrari loved him like a son, but sadly Gilles never won any world championship and instead lost his life in the Ferrari.

So, the news of Jacques continuing the Villeneuve presence in formula one is most welcome. I just hope that he makes a strong account of himself in 2006.

20 November 200524 April 2017

A1 GP gets a strong fan today

Tail Happy Racing with Tun Dr M & Sheikh Al Makhtoum

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.

18 November 200524 April 2017

A1GP comes to Sepang, Malaysia

Today is the start of the Malaysian A1GP weekend at Sepang.

Malaysia will be Round 5 of the 12 round “winter” racing series – the Racing World Cup of Nations.

It is quite a unique concept which harks back to the the pre-war Grands Prix series (precursor to F1) where (usually European) nations would have an entry with their own manufacturers to battle each other in the premier racing series. Those days, the teams would run in national colours – although those colours have somewhat changed in the modern day A1GP series (eg – Italy was red in the early days and now blue – the azzuris; and Germany was silver, but now follows their national football team colours).

Still the concept is a cool concept and for A1GP to race in the “F1 winter” offers racing fans something to follow when F1 is taking its long break.

As for Team Malaysia, this is really our first time in the motorsports world stage and as such the challenge for Team Malaysia is really getting quickly up to speed with the racing culture, the commitments to deliver results, the teamworking, the technology, the psychology, the PR and everything else.

Against popular opinion, Team Malaysia has done ourselves proud by being fairly competitive. Yes, there are teething issues, yes there is a hint of lack of experience, but being joint 9th and 9 pts off from 4th place after 5 rounds is pretty good. And this is on merit mind you – as Malaysia has constantly qualified within the top 10, and both Alex & Fairuz has done great things to improve on those grid positions. Alex was even up to 2nd in the main race in Germany during the early stages!

So things are looking up for Team Malaysia and hopefully they (we) can build on this momentum and continue to improve and catch the leading bunch of France, Brasil and Switzerland.

So Friday will see Team Malaysia putting the A1GP car thru its paces and hopefully both Alex and Fairuz can use a bit of local track knowledge to push the Team further up the ranks. If weather becomes a factor, let’s hope that it brings Team Malaysia a positive change.

So go Team Malaysia. TheFazz and my-KART are supporting you!