Asian Motor Sports

One of Australia’s most promising young racing drivers John Martin has been signed up to race for newly crowned Scottish champions Rangers FC in this year’s Superleague Formula.

The 24-year-old Australian raced in British Formula 3 and A1GP in 2007 and 2008, and made a one-off outing for Comtec Racing in Formula Renault 3.5 at Monaco last weekend.

He tested the 2009-spec Superleague car at Magny-Cours recently, where he will begin the season for recently-crowned Scottish league champion Rangers next month.

“We are excited to have a driver of John’s talents racing for Rangers in this year’s Superleague Formula,” said Rangers chief executive Martin Bain.

“Everyone at the club wishes John all the best for the new season. Now we’ve won the SPL title, it would be great to start enjoying similar success on the race track.”

Although newly graduated to Superleague Formula, the Aussie ace has already experienced the thrill of driving one of the V12-powered 750 horsepower single-seaters that are raced by all the competing football clubs.

He recently took part in a special test at Magny-Cours in France set up to test the more powerful 2009 specification engine which will propel all the cars when this year’s series kicks off next month at the former home of the French Grand Prix.

“After doing that test I know it’s a great car to drive. That’s why I’m really excited to be given this opportunity, which also takes me another step closer to my dream of Formula 1.

With its V12 engine, the Superleague car is definitely the most powerful car I’ve raced so far. What’s more it’s by far the best sounding!” enthused Martin who has been doing his homework on the club he’ll be representing. “Rangers are a very successful team in Scotland; therefore the pressure’s on me… but there’s nothing wrong with that. I know the team who are running the car really well, which gives me confidence we’ll go to the first round and be pretty quick.”

Superleague Formula
Superleague Formula is the fusion of the two of the world’s most popular sports – capturing the passion of football with the thrill and excitement of motor racing. The new concept features a field of evenly matched V12-powered, 750 horsepower single seater racecars bearing the colours of the world’s leading football teams. Traditional rivals on the pitch are doing battle at some of the world’s greatest racetracks.

The series kicked off in 2008 with 12 ‘double-header races staged at six of Europe’s premier venues. Underlining the competitive nature of Superleague Formula, no fewer than eight soccer clubs (AC Milan, Al-Ain, Beijing Guoan FC, BVB Borussia Dortmund, Liverpool FC, FC Porto, PSV Eindhoven and Sevilla FC) experienced race victories during what was a dramatic inaugural campaign. Building on this success, an expanded grid will contest the 2009 championship, which starts at Magny-Cours in France on 27/28 June.