A1GP: Malaysia Looking Forward to Portugal Round 3 This Weekend

and will continue with questionable strategy of shared driving duties.

With Malaysia currently in the top-ten of the A1GP championship, the team can look forward to Portugal's round 3 to consolidate their position before leaving Europe to make a concerted effort to improve their position in more familiar venues in Australia and Malaysia.

The final European round in Portugal's Estoril circuit will be held over 21-23 October 2005 this weekend.

The team has confirmed that it will continue with its programme of sharing driving duties between its selected drivers, Fairuz Fauzy and Alex Yoong, and that both drivers will be racing at the A1 Grand Prix Malaysian event at Sepang for the benefit of the thousands of Malaysian fans that are expected to attend. This strategy argued by the Malaysian team is central to the team’s goals of developing young Malaysian motor racing talent and building a team with the depth and breadth of experience and abilities required to compete in international motorsport at this level although many would question this strategy.

In order to maintain a true level playing field, A1 Grand Prix does not allow testing programmes outside of race weekends, which requires all teams to use the free practice sessions for driver evaluation and development.

Cunningham clarifies how this impacts on A1 Team Malaysia, saying, “Let’s not forget that all teams are in the same position. Whilst the lack of opportunity for free testing does come at a cost to us, in terms of not being able to give either driver as much time in the car as those one-driver teams, it’s still the right way to go. Just look at Fairuz’s performance. He’s done well. He suffered from a cold at the German event but look at the effort he has put in. As far as Alex is concerned, look at his performance at Brands and at Eurospeedway. Really outstanding stuff. So, as I have said previously, we are lucky we have two individuals of this calibre. Other nations I know are jealous of that resource. We are nurturing that so we can use it wisely.”

However this site cannot see how the other countries which use only one driver per weekend can be jealous of Malaysia's two driver resource since all these nations have much bigger depth of driver pool than Malaysia has. In fact these advance motorsport nations which use one driver per weekend and which have a much bigger driver pool is simply very single minded in trying to win the inaugural championship using the best strategy available.

We are not suggesting that Malaysia only uses one driver for the entire championship but certainly both drivers can be involved in racing in the championship if the team uses one driver per round over each round's entire weekend. This would meet the team's strategic approach of developing driving talents surely.

As it is now, both the Malaysian drivers will suffer non-peak performance levels over a single race weekend merely due to the handicap of lesser track time per weekend compared to the teams that know better.

Telecasts notes: The qualifying and races for Portugal will be shown live over StarSports on Saturday and Sunday evenings Malaysian time while 8TV will carry delayed telecasts on the same days. For programme schedule go to StarSports and 8TV.

Max Revson