Sri Lanka’s bid to make history in motor racing came one notch closer when the country’s foremost motor racing team EZY Racing, successfully took flight to Malaysia to participate in the first rally of the Asia Cup of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship 2014 to be held from 15th to 17th August.
The team comprising multiple winner of the National Rally Championship Dinesh Deheragoda and Co driver Shafraz Junaid alongside the support crew of the team, took flight on the National Carrier Sri Lankan Airlines who have come forward as the official carrier of the coveted motor racing team, who will be creating history when they officially get flagged off on Friday evening in the city of Johor Bahru, Malaysia, amidst an anticipated crowd of 15,000 spectators.
EZY Racing’s International rally driver was given an official send off at the Sports Ministry by the Honorable Minister for Sports, Mahindananda Aluthgamamage along with the President and Secretary of the Sri Lanka Automobile Sports (SLAS) before taking flight on the national carrier.
Deheragoda a 17 time national champion, speaking to the media said “It is a privilege for me to have the opportunity to represent the country in an FIA (Governing body for world motor sports) sanctioned event. This year we start our campaign with the Asia Cup that kicks off in Malaysia and then moves to Japan, China and Thailand. Most of our competitors arrive in Malaysia after having concluded the Pacific Cup challenge that was held in Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. They would most certainly have a good measurement of how their cars perform and react to different terrains. We expect it to be a difficult rally as Malaysia is considered to be the toughest rally for the cars. We are hopeful of bringing home some strong results and will most certainly phase ourselves in a manner that would help us to peak at the right time”.
With Rally Malaysia expected to provide the cars a stiff challenge Deheragoda was confident finest that he would be able to maintain a competitive average speed across the 230 km Rally.
“This is the first time that we are running in Malaysia. Therefore the unknown for us exceeds the known factors. Our team which includes the crew members are scheduled to arrive in Singapore a week in advance to prepare ourselves mentally and physically for this challenge. It is definitely a learning curve for us and we hope to learn as quickly as possible.” said Shafraz Hamzadeen, Team Principal and CEO of EZY Racing.
Hamzadeen further went on to answer a question on how competitive his team would be in Malaysia by stating, “Competing in APRC itself is a great achievement. Of course we are not here to be satisfied by just participating. We are here to explore how we could win. However, commenting on our competitiveness this early would be a little premature as we are a new team in APRC. We carry absolutely no history. Therefore we have no clue as to where we stand against the competition. All that we know is that we are bound to have a very very busy weekend where we will continuously learn where we are against competition and figure out as to how we could improve on our stage timing’
EZY Racing who launched the ER 88, their International Rally Racing car early July, are expected to take the car out of the container that it got shipped in, on Sunday. They expect to test the car early on, in the week and prepare the car through the week to pass the very strict scrutinizing process practiced in APRC.
EZY Racing hopes to provide live feeds of the Rally on their Facebook fan page www.fb.com/ezyracing that has over 60,000 racing fans and will invite every motor racing enthusiast to follow the ER88 as they carry the Sri Lankan flag proudly in Malaysia.
