Richard Bradley increased his championship lead to 34 points following rounds 5 and 6 of the F.BMW Pacific Series held at the Sepang F1 Circuit on May 16th. Eurasia increased its lead in the Team Championship thanks to the efforts of all four drivers.
Round five, the third race of the weekend, was once again held in hot and sunny conditions. Starting positions for the days two races were based on the finishing positions of the previous day therefore Nabil Jeffri lined up 5th with Padayachee 10th, Sakurai 15th and Bradley 18th. Another brilliant drive from Bradley saw him scythe through the field, finishing fourth overall, second in the Pacific Series. Kotaro Sakurai also had an impressive drive, finishing 5th overall from 15th on the grid, third in the Pacific points. Nabil Jeffri faded towards the end of the race, his fever being worse than the day before. It was a brave drive again from the local driver. Duvashen Padayachee was again battling for the whole race, finally finishing in 10th place, 7th in the Pacific points.
The grid for round six had Nabil Jeffri in 5th place, Bradley 8th, Padayachee 10th and Sakurai in 22nd. Bradley was soon up to 5th place and hunted down Oon to take the Pacific lead. He then cruised around content to finish behind the three guest drivers having learnt that racing with them could be detrimental to his championship points. Sakurai from the very back was up to 6th with a couple of laps to go when he was tagged by Dixon into turn one, damaging the front wing and consigning him to 8th place. Padayachee had a very entertaining race, constantly battling again and grabbing tenth place on the last lap. Meanwhile Nabil Jeffri had a fraught race, contact with Calvin Wong and James Birch dropping him down the field. He eventually finished 11th, still suffering from a fever.
“We demonstrated we are the pace in the Pacific Series, coming away with increased leads in both driver and team championships. We were also very competitive with the guest drivers, without the accidents I am sure we could have won overall. It demonstrates the standard here is now on par with Europe” stated Mark Goddard of Eurasia.
Next event is in Korea in August, the AFOS event will be the first race meeting at the new Korean F1 Circuit.
