18-year old PETRONAS development rider Hafizh Syahrin Abdullah made an impressive debut with a fifth place finish in the Moto2 category in the opening round of the 2012 Campeonato Español de Velocidad or the Spanish CEV Buckler National Motorcycle Championship at the Circuito de Jerez on Sunday.
The weekend’s proceeding saw Hafizh open his account with a strong qualifying performance with the third fastest time that earned the Malaysian a front row start in P3 for Sunday’s curtain-raiser round. The youngster was able to maintain his form into Sunday’s pre-race warm up session with Hafizh clocking in with the second fastest time of the session.
The afternoon’s race that began under damp conditions was red-flagged on the fourth lap following several crashes involving other riders. Whilst other riders pitted in for full slicks for the restart, Hafizh instead opted to pit after the warm-up lap to switch to full wets with the onset of more rain. As a result, the youngster had dropped down the order at the re-start. Despite rejoining the race almost a lap down, Hafizh took full advantage of the situation having already switched to wet tyres to regain on-track position. After a courageous battle through the remainder of the 9-lap race, Hafizh managed to move up to fifth by the close of the race. The youngster also clocked the fastest lap of the race with his time of 1:57.697mins.
