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Friday August 21, 2009

Meritus Racing plan F1 debut in 2016

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s Meritus Racing Team are one of the most successful teams in Asia, having won 32 Asian motorsports titles in just 12 years. And now, they have set their sights on competing in Formula One by the year 2016.

Meritus chief Firhat Mokhzani said that for now they planned to move into GP2 Europe by 2011.

“We are currently the only Asian team granted a licence to race in the GP2 Asia series and, by including the European series in the future, it will be a stepping stone towards F1,” he said.

“Our ambitious plan, which has been fuelled by the team’s unprecedented successes since 1996, is within grasp. We have been quietly setting up the blueprints which will see us race in Europe in two years’ time.”

Firhat, however, noted that there was a need to develop motorsport engineering technology as well as a sustainable motorsport industry in Malaysia.

“This will provide a sustainable profit-generating industry which will absorb the development costs to structure and develop an engineering design team,” he said.

“We would be honoured to one day race as the national team in F1 and we hope to be ready to build our own F1 car with Malaysian engineers by 2016.”

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