AFR: Series Zhuhai preview

AFR Championship waves Hi to the race fans after a long winter break

The Zhuhai International Circuit (ZIC) enjoyed the one of a kind engine roar from Formula Renault 2.0 vehicles on Tuesday after a rather long winter break. Due to the delicate custom circumstances at the beginning of 2010, all the cars couldn't enter ZIC and stranded at Hong Kong months longer than the original plan. Based on the pleasant cooperation established the past decade, mutual understanding was reached among FRD, all the teams and ZIC. The 2010 AFR's first action will be taken on April 24th-25th, 2010 during the Pan Delta-CSBK race weekend. It will be a non- championship race for AFR and the teams & drivers shall take full advantage of this water-testing opportunity to better shape themselves for the season.

As the 12 years-old championship's promoter, FRD is taking in some new element to the AFR program. Mr. Paul Hui, FRD's Marketing Director, indicated that many manufactures from the region had shown great interest in utilizing the AFR championship as the executive platform for their young driver development program and more entries and teams are expected for the rear race in May. Meanwhile, the championship is slowly evolving into a series with good combination of young guns plus seasoned drivers in 2010, thus AFR will be a good platform for drivers from different generations to fight and learn.

AFR April event will enjoy a nice grid with 14 drivers from Asia Racing Team (ART), PTRS racing team, Champ Motorsport, Top Speed Racing team and FRD Racing team. ART confirmed to bring 2 new-faces to the championship from Thailand, Tin Sritrai (21 years old) and Sandy Stuvik (15 years old), both of them have outstanding performance in Karting series in Thailand and Asia. The Thais chose AFR as their stepping stone to march into single- seater; Luca Ferigutti, marked himself with remarkable improvement and several podiums towards the end of last season, he is looking forward to continuing the good performance this week; Rainey He, the lead driver from CTCC 2000cc Changan Ford Racing team, will continue to establish his position in single seater race and improve his driving skills, wearing FRD racing suit in AFR. Martin Cao, the youngest driver in CTCC 2000cc who is also from Changan Ford Racing team, will race on side of his teammate Rainey in 2010 AFR; Top Speed racing team will bring 2 new drivers from Europe and Samin Gomez Briceno, the young girl from Venezuela with good speed, finished last year 9th in the very competitive International class and confirmed her entry; Shanqi Zhang and Zhicong Li, 2 young guns from PTRS with good ranks last season, will continue to contribute to the brilliance of the championship; Champ Motorsport enters 4 drivers this time, 3 of which will have their first ever AFR race this week; Sunny Wong and Robert Webb graduated from Ford Formula Campus championship last year and AFR turned out to be their first choice to move to the next level; Chang Mun Shien, another teenage driver in AFR from Malaysia will enjoy his first single-seater race experience in AFR in 3 days.

Mr. Paul Hui also said that the 2010 season will feature more cars and new faces. The 14 rounds' championship will travel to Zhuhai, Chengdu and Shanghai with Pan Delta, C1 and CTCC race weekends, bringing the AFR kind of excitement to the race fans!

-source: frd