Aidan Read, the 16-year-old emerging racing driver from Perth, Western Australia took another step of his development journey as a racing driver in Formula Masters China Series (FMCS), which joined the inaugural KL City Grand Prix in Malaysia (7-9 August).
The Malaysian organisers have created a sensational race venue around the streets in the heart of the capital city to emulate Monaco and Macau, as the roads were given over to the race cars and the noise of racing reverberated from the landmarks, such as the famous Petronas Towers.
Read, driving a Eurasia Motorsport Formula Masters single-seater, would be tackling a street track for the first time in his short career and was soon to find out that the tight nature of a street track along with the bumps and inconsistent surface conditions were to pose an altogether different challenge to the regular permanent circuits he has enjoyed success on in the series to date.
Through practice and qualifying Aidan struggled to find a balance with the car that allowed him to have the confidence to attack as hard as he wanted and had a minor excursion learning how the bumps affected the car the hard way.
Nonetheless, a half decent qualifying effort in a much interrupted session saw him qualify tenth and 11th for races 1 and 3 respectively, with race 2’s starting position to be determined by the results of race 1’s timesheets.
“I have struggled through practice to get confident with the car and the new conditions of a track like this make it all the harder to develop any kind of rhythm that gives you the help with the way to adapt your driving and balance yourself with the car,” said Read. “I went off in turn 12 looking for a smoother line to avoid the bumps, but in doing so just found a bigger one and made contact with the barriers.”
Race 1 took place on the Saturday (8 August) afternoon and Read was unlucky to find a stalled car on the grid at the start in front of him and did well to avoid collecting the stationary car. Now having to push from half a lap back, Read had nothing to lose and used the laps to gain more experience with the car.
Sunday’s two races would be held in front of a sizeable local crowd who had come to watch a variety of machinery including Australian V8 supercars and would be treated to two cracking FMCS races.
The first the sprint race saw Read line-up 11th, this time getting away cleanly with a decent start that moved him into the top ten, only to be caught out once again by the undulations, this time in turn 1 that resulted on a pit visit and, whilst able to rejoin, brought the car home at the rear of the pack.
Determined to make amends in race 3 and after analysing his driving style to try and better adapt to the conditions, Read made a cracking start and was up to seventh on the first lap. At last finding some consistent race pace and battling hard with those around him, the youngster adopted a mature approach to this race and had decided to maximise his laps and, whilst defending hard from his team mate, opted for finishing rather than not and did not risk the car.
After 15 laps, a more satisfied Read brought the car home in the points and felt some progress had been made and lessons learned from a tough weekend.
“This was undoubtedly the biggest challenge of my driving career so far,” said Read. “I am not ashamed to say that I struggled to get to grips with all the many factors that effect the car and driver on a street circuit and found it hard to know what way to go with my car set up and driving style, but slowly over the weekend I got to grips with it and am leaving KL better prepared for next time and looking forward to Zhuhai where things will hopefully be more to my liking and I can take the fight back to my rivals in normal Aidan style!”
The series now moves on to Zhuhai China on the (18-20 September) for the penultimate round of the 2015 Formula Masters China Series (FMCS).
Don’t forget to ‘like’ Aidan Read in the FMCS Sport Auto Driver of 2015 campaign: http://www.sportauto.cn/partner/fmcs/vote/
For more information on Aidan Read and his racing activities, please visit the official www.aidanread.com.au website, ‘like’ his Facebook page or view content on his YouTube channel.