It was an outstanding end to the JK Racing Asia Series weekend at Buddh International Circuit for Eurointernational when three of their drivers stepped up to the podium after an exciting battle filled Round 12 race. Aston Hare cemented his Rookie Championship in style when he crossed the finish line first, ahead of teammates Aditya Patel and Danial Hidzir making it an Eurointernational clean sweep of the podium. Meritus.GP driver Afiq Ikhwan finished fourth after fighting hard despite losing power midway through the race while Nabil Jeffri, who led at the start of the race was given a drive through penalty for a jump start infringement. He served his penalty on lap 5 and finished the race in eighth.
The win was a surprise for Hare as he did not know of Jeffri’s drive through, thinking that he was too far up ahead to be seen when he took the lead. For the home grown hero, Patel was all smiles after the race and was unable to move without being congratulated all the way back to the paddock. He made his country proud and was delighted to be given the chance to race in the Series once again “It’s a great feeling again, just like yesterday being on the podium here in front of my home crowd and to do it again today is such a brilliant feeling”.
It was a hard fight to the podium finish for Hidzir, the Malaysian kept his promise of finishing in top three and could not stop smiling. At the post race interview, he spoke of his race “I had an okay start, it wasn’t really good actually to be honest, it was one of my worst starts. I don’t know why, probably because yesterday my throttle cable got stuck and I was afraid that it would happen again. So I just held on to my limiter a little ‘nicely’.
Coming in fourth, Ikhwan was walking around with a sad smile as he had the opportunity for a win. “It was a very difficult race today. I was very unlucky, the car had no pace. We made some changes yesterday but the changes didn’t work very well for the race today. But overall I am happy with my results this weekend, a win yesterday and I can only thank my team and my sponsor, Petronas, for it”. Aidan Wright impressed everyone with his pace this weekend, running at the top with the leading drivers most of the qualifying session and throughout both races. The Australian Meritus.GP driver fought hard to maintain his pace and finished fifth from an eighth placed start.
The JK Racing Asia Series will continue at Buddh once again for the 2012 Season finale with Rounds 13-16 from 30th November to 2nd December 2012.
