A1GP news

Yoong not worried after disappointing performance in Holland

While A1 Teams South Africa and Great Britain were taking the plaudits at Zandvoort with their race victories on Sunday, at least one team was left scratching its collective head.
A1 Team Malaysia has been front runners in both seasons of A1GP, and still sits third in the all-time race winners list. Showing good pace in pre-season testing it went into the season with high hopes of running away with victory, yet it proved to be a false start.

The final results of 16th in the Sprint and retirement in the Feature were a disappointment essentially because of the high standards set by the team in the first two seasons. 'The wet weather in qualifying really ruined us,' explained lead driver Alex Yoong, who with 42 caps, now stands alone as the most experienced driver in A1GP. 'We realised far too late in qualifying that we weren't getting enough temperature into the tyres.

'Normally wet tyres don't work with high temperature - wets tend to cure unless we keep them cool, but the heat gives us grip. We realised too late that we had to get more heat into them.'

Making the most of a bad situation, Yoong pulled off some classy passing manoeuvres in the Sprint, but still couldn't get anywhere near the points. In the 15-lap encounter he moved up four places. 'We just went the wrong way on set-up and then starting 20th, well, what can we do from there?'

It didn't get much better. With more time to move up in the Feature race, there was still optimism that a dry track and two pit stops could mean a points finish for the team and something could be salvaged from a tough weekend. But alas, bad luck struck.

'In the Feature race we were up to 15th,' he continued. 'The car was competitive, I mean, it maybe wasn't good enough to win but we could have definitely finished top ten and in the points. The car was quick enough. But then the hub broke and we couldn't continue.'

It wasn't exactly the start Malaysia was looking for, and it wasn't the start the team's rivals were expecting - the unexpected sight of seeing the bright yellow car without any points from the opening two races.

Yet Yoong was, and still is, upbeat. The team began last season without any points from Zandvoort and look what happened a few days later at Brno - a double victory. And he points out, there is no reason why the same can't happen again.

'You've got to get over it,' he insists. 'It is still too early in the season to be thinking about what is going to happen championship wise. You have just got to concentrate on doing your own job and getting your points on the board. Last year we finished Zandvoort with zero points too. So we go to Brno to try and do the same job that we did last year and come back with a lot of points.'

With the dominance last year the team should be able to hit the ground running, knowing it has a strong set-up to attack from the off. Yet the 31-year-old still believes it will be a challenge on the wide sweeping track. 'Yes, we can use last year's set-up but I'm anticipating that the set-up will only be in the ball park of where we will need to be.

'There will always be a little bit of fine tuning. You can't just put a magic set-up on it and hope everything is ok. Everyone is improving in this field and you have to keep up. But yes. We're quite confident for Brno.'

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