SEPANG: With three of his riders for the 2018 season competing this weekend, Sepang International Circuit (SIC) chief executive officer Datuk Razlan Razali will be watching the Shell Malaysia Motorcycle Grand Prix with bated breath.
Earlier this week, SIC inked a three-year deal with Petronas for the setting up of a new Moto2 team, to be run by the former with funding from the latter, under the name Petronas Sprinta Racing.
The team will feature Hafizh Syahrin Abdullah, who currently races for Petronas Raceline in Moto2.
SIC Racing Team, which currently competes in Moto3 with Adam Norrodin and Ayumu Sasaki (Japan), will be renamed Petronas Sprinta Racing and both riders will be retained for next season.
Razlan is expecting a strong performance from his riders as well as the other Malaysians competing at Sepang this weekend.
“Hafizh is very talented but he needs to be very focused next year if he is to achieve that ambition to be the first Malaysian to ride in MotoGP in 2019,” he said when met at the MoU signing between SIC and TOC Automotive College today.
“Of course we are hoping for an exciting weekend, especially from all the Malaysian riders including Khairul Idham Pawi and Kasma Daniel Kasmayuddin. This is their home grand prix... they are racing in front of their own crowd.”
Khairul (Idemitsu Honda Team Asia), who has endured a difficult season since moving from Moto3 to Moto2 this season, as well as Moto3 wildcard rider Kasma (Petronas) are the other Malaysians competing.
Meanwhile, the MoU between SIC and TOC aims to develop more Malaysian’s capable of becoming race engineers and mechanics in the future.
“At the moment, we have the teams and the machinery but we do not have enough technical staff capable of managing them,” said Razlan.
TOC is hoping to produce up to 500 Malaysian engineers over the next five years.