FAZRUL SHAM MAKES HIS MARK IN FIRST MSBK150 OUTING
The season opener of the 2020 Malaysia Superbike Championship (MSBK) opened to mixed weather conditions, with dry racing weather in the morning and rain in the afternoon. As the 11-bike MSBK150 grid went out on track for the time, Cardinal Racing Team’s Ahmad Fazrul Sham was the first to make an impression.
The seasoned campaigner topped with MSBK150 timesheets with 2’35.217s. Equally competitive was his Cardinal Racing Team team mate, Mohd Iqbal Amri Abdul Malek who posted 2’35.337s. JR Performance Wossner YYPang Racing Team’s Mohd Izzat Zaidi Mohd Salehan followed with the third fastest time of the day with 2’36.083s while UMA Racing Yamaha Maju Motor Asia Team duo Mohd Haziq Mohd Fairues and Mohd Akid Aziz rounded up the top 10.
Here are some quotes from the riders after the first day of practice:
Ahmad Fazrul Sham (Yamaha) (Cardinal Racing Team)
“We’ve had a long break since the first round of the FIM Asia Road Racing Championship (ARRC) held in March this year just before the Movement Control Order was enforced. Luckily, the MSBK150 runs on the same specs as the Underbone 150 class of the ARRC, so we were able to get competitive very quickly. Unfortunately, rain in the afternoon put paid to our plans to better our laptimes, so we’ll just have to wait for the qualifying session to make further improvements.”
Mohd Akid Aziz (Yamaha) (UMA Racing Yamaha Maju Motor Asia Team)
“The unpredictable weather looks set to continue through to the weekend. Today, our focus was more on getting our bikes set up for various weather conditions as opposed to chasing after quick times.”
Mohd Adib Rosley (Yamaha) (JR Performance Wossner YYPang Racing Team)
“We had some problems getting the right setup during FP1. Unfortunately, bad weather cancelled out our option to test our improvements during FP2. However, I’m still confident that I will be able to do better in the qualifying.”
Mohd Nazir Nor Samsol (Yamaha) (GRT 555 Racing Team)
“We gained some benchmarks today, but our team is still working hard to make further improvements.”
Mohd Khairul Ikhwan Ajis (Yamaha) (Team AHM Motorsports Yamaha Racing)
“It was a challenging day for us when our bike had some mechanical problems during FP1. The problems were quickly resolved but the rain put paid to our efforts to improve on my laptimes. However, I was quite satisfied with my laptimes during the rain and if this weather should continue over the weekend, I’m pretty confident of our ability to get good results in the wet.”