Last weekend, 13/14 March was my first race of the year. Although my priority for the year is F-BMW, I'm going to carry on racing karts as much as possible - it's good fun and practice and also helps my general fitness and race craft.
For Rotax this year I'm racing in the senior class regularly for the 1st time, although I did do one race in Hong Kong in 2008 in seniors. Seniors is a tough competition - I'll be racing against Afiq Ikwan - who's driving for Meritus in F-BMW, Mikko Nassi - the defending champion and a whole lot of other top drivers from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
The week leading up to the race was pretty tiring because it was the three test days for F-BMW before the official on 28th March. The test days were great - I had good speed on all three days and on the last day got down to 2:11.7 - my fastest lap ever at Sepang. That made me the fastest of the EurAsia drivers and 3rd or 4th fastest overall so is a good sign for the upcoming races.
RMC is always a three day event so having finished the F-BMW tests on Thursday, I was straight back to Sepang for kart practice on Friday. It was nice to be back in a kart and straight away my kart and engine felt good. The track layout has changed - it runs anti-clockwise now and so I had to spend some time learning a new track and finding the best line through some of the corners. We tried a few setting changes on the kart and I got to good and consistent lap times.
Saturday is a practice session, then qualifying and heat 1. Qualifying was good, I managed to get pole position in front of Japanese driver Sena and Afiq so was very happy. Heat 1 was fairly simple - I made a good start and got a lead into the 1st corner. I was a bit faster than the others so managed to pull away a bit on each lap so by lap 5 I had a 10 meter lead and then just concentrated on driving smoothly until the finish.
Sunday is heat 2, then the pre-final and final. Heat 2 was almost the same as heat 1 and I lead all the way. The start of the pre-final was a bit more exciting. Afiq got ahead of me at the start but at the end of lap 2 I out-braked him going into the 2nd last corner. Everyone said it was a really good pass although to me it was fairly simple - my kart was handling really well and the brakes are good so once I got into the right position I was confident I could pass him. After that I pulled away a bit and then conserved the kart for the final. The final went well - 1st into the first corner and I actually had a quite a big lead after the 1st lap, the people behind me had swapped positions in turn 1 and a couple run off the track so they slowed each other down. From that point it was a case of keeping it tidy and doing smooth consistent laps. Mikko finished 2nd with Sena 3rd. Afiq had a puncture in the middle of the pre-final so did well to come up to 6th in the final.
My "new" kart team - GP Racing - had a good weekend. My senior team-mate Shafiq Ali got up to 5th place in the final after a difficult weekend which started with him getting a puncture in qualifying and starting from the back in both heats so 5th was a great result for him. Terence also came 2nd in Masters and another teams driver using a GP Racing kart won in DD2.
So, a really good start to the racing year. Hopefully my debut in F-BMW will go well as well!
For the next two weeks, I get a sample of life might be like as a professional racing driver. Because it's the 1st round of the Plus Yamaha SL Cup and the Offcial F-BMW test this weekend and then rounds 1&2 of the F-BMW Pacific series the next weekend, I'm rushing around like mad going to launches, tests, practice sessions and then races at the moment - there's something nearly every day. 
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