A1GP: Malaysia Struggles in Friday Practices in Germany

A1 Team Malaysia struggles in practices (click image to enlarge)

With both Alex and Fairuz having never driven in the Lausitz road course before they have a mountain to climb in qualifying.

A1 Team Malaysia returned to the track for the first two practice sessions of the A1Grand Prix of Nations EuroSpeedway Lausitz, Germany, the second round of this new international motor racing series today (Friday). However the team were visibly struggling with both Alex Yoong and Fairuz Fauzy showing 17th at the end of the two sessions.

Alex summed up the opening session, saying, “It’s our first time here and it’s quite a tricky track, so we had to work hard developing the optimum set up of the car. It’s good to be back in the A1 race car, and it’s been interesting to come to a new track for me. We’ll continue to work hard to improve on our times and be competitive for the race.”

Fairuz commented on his practice session saying, “After Alex’s time in the car this morning we reviewed the data and made some setup changes, but they didn’t really improve it. It’s quite a technical track, with a mix of fast and slow corners, so it will take some time to get the car to our liking.”

Yoong added, “We’ll review the data with the engineers and have a better understanding of what we need to do and the direction in which we’re heading. Practice sessions are for exactly what the name suggests – practicing, so we weren’t out on track today simply to try and set the fastest times. However, 17th is not what we had expected. It shows the importance and value of having run on this track before, something neither Fairuz nor I have done. We have some ideas from our running today with respect to changes we will make to the car setup and so, with that and our increasing experience here, we are cautiously optimistic that we will improve quite a bit tomorrow.”

Neither of the two Malaysian drivers have never driven on the EuroSpeedway Lausitz road course before although Alex had driven the Oval track when Champ Car visited Lausitz in 2003.

For full results of the practices click HERE (Practice 1) and HERE (practice 2).
- Max Revson