Asian Motor Sports

Asian motorsport ambassadors MalaysiaQI-MeritusMaharaGP.com team’s new line-up of Luca Filippi and rookie Alexander Rossi was announced at a recent press conference hosted in the presence of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, FIA Vice President and President of the Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE Ben Sulayem, FIA Vice President, showing the team’s strong Arabic roots through its Saudi partner, Chaiman Raad S. Abduljawad.

Despite a difficult day and high winds that brought sand everywhere in the car and on the track, the two drivers, Italian Luca Filippi (20) and US Alexander Rossi (21) had a good start of the first practice session at Yas Marina circuit and finished the 30 minutes first practice with the best times of 1.54.446 for Filippi, the fastest after 11 laps and 1.55.077 in 8th position for Rossi, also having completed 11 laps respectively

In the qualifying session the two drivers had different fortunes but both will start from the back of the grid.

The session started strongly for Luca Filippi. He looked to have a good chance of taking pole, but his efforts achieved no good result as his engine lost power and the car stopped.

As for rookie Alexander Rossi (21) had a strong qualifying and finished fifth with 1.52.861 in qualifying but a decision of the Stewards lines him up beside his team-mate on the back of the grid for race 1 tomorrow. During a pitstop, a mechanic adjusted the front- wing hole setting on one side to 17 and on the other side to whole 18 which is not allowed – a simple human error.

The target for both drivers now is a top-eight result in race 1 as the top 8 finishers in race 1 have a reverse grid format for race 2.

Luca Filippi: “I arrived very motivated for qualifying. After the first free practice session run I must say everything looked good. But nothing went as per the plan and we had no radio communication to start with. My engine lost power and that was it. I am very disappointed to start from the back of the grid and not to have been able to do a better qualifying.”

Alexander Rossi: “I was pleased in the free practice session to be in the top ten and finish 8th. I was even more pleased to have established that the car had good pace in qualifying. However, the session was difficult with no radio with the team and in the end, I did not know how many laps were left in the qualifying session. There was not that much traffic except in the last lap and we could work reasonably well and progress during the session. Half of me is frustrated because we could have been in front row but we will start from the back.

Peter Thompson said: “We proved today that weh ad the pace. Unfortunately we had technical problems with Luca Filippi (20)’s car and although it was a human error it is simply unacceptable that we should make this error. The drivers now have a big task in tomorrow’s race, but they believe that they have the car and the pace to aim for a top-8 result and please God we can target a podium fort his Saturday race too.”

Chairman Raad S. Abduljawad: “A pity because the drivers and the team had done a good job and set good times despite some reliability problems encountered with Luca Filippi’s car.