By AZLAN RAMLI
THERE are a handful of race series a young driver has to go through, to reach Formula 1 (F1), the “pinnacle of motorsport”.
The best start is always go-karts – the serious, not-cheap competitive series, not the weekend fun ones.
Karters who excel at the international or at least regional level may graduate to Formula 4.
Here in South East Asia, there’s Formula 4 South East Asia (F4 SEA), the first step for young drivers looking to reach F1 or other top-level races such as LMP1*.
*LMP1 or Le Mans Prototype 1 is one of the three categories of sports prototype race car in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, FIA World Endurance Championship, WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, European Le Mans Series and Asian Le Mans Series.
It is designed to transition 15-19 year-old karters into formula racing, giving them the foundation they need to get into F1 and other higher level racing.
F4 SEA’s grid of F1 hopefuls return to the Sepang F1 Circuit on Aug 23-25, for an action-packed four-race weekend.
To answer the question “Is Formula 1 Your Dream?”, the organiser invited Gear Up! (Ed: This is the third consecutive year, by the way!) to test out the F4 cars ahead of the race weekend.
As expected, we went on a handful of scary, thrilling, painful, dreamy and flat-out AWESOME laps with the angry F4 car around the full race circuit in car “7”.
The test was just a taste of what’s to come this weekend, so be sure to tune in to the facebook.com/Formula4SEA/ page, to watch it all, live!
*Thanks to F4 SEA promoter and big daddy Peter Thompson and his very professional team, for the track time and trusting their very expensive machinery in my adrenaline-overdosed hands!
