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Thursday September 17, 2009

Meritus hail Malaysia’s entry into Formula One

PETALING JAYA: The announcement of Malaysia’s entry into next season’s Formula One world championship has indeed raised the profile of the sport in the country.

The country will finally have a team to call its own when the International Automobile Federation (FIA) accepted Malaysia’s bid to field the Lotus-powered 1Malaysia F1 team.

Malaysian-owned Meritus Racing, who are Asia’s most successful motorsports team with 32 international titles in the past 12 years, welcomed Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s initiative to start the country’s own team.

Team owner Firhat Mokhzani described it as fantastic news for Malaysia.

“Meritus have started to help groom future Malaysian Formula One engineers and crew as well as drivers ... we are Malaysia’s premier F1 development team with our involvement in Formula BMW, Formula V6 Asia as well as the GP2 Asia series.

“In fact, our Formula BMW engineering team is 100% Malaysian. In 2011, we will also move into GP2 Europe, which is the gateway for drivers to catch the eye of Formula One teams,” he said.

Meritus certainly have a history of producing F1 pilots, with the likes of Narain Kartikeyan, Takuma Sato and Ricardo Rossett to name a few.

Former McLaren F1 driver David Coulthard first tested with Meritus in 1990 back when the team was based in England.

Jazeman Jaafar, who was nurtured by Meritus and who went on to be the youngest ever Formula BMW Asia champion in 2007, was even invited by Sir Frank Williams to try out the team’s F1 simulator.

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