Looking back at an empty season from Brands Hatch

This (left) was a picture I just spontaneously took as I stumbled upon A1 Team Malaysia drivers Fairuz Fauzy (left) and Aaron Lim sharing an intimate moment together at the back of the team tent during the weekend of the final round of the series in Brands Hatch recently.

Wonder what they were whispering to each other. It had been and turned out to be a really bad season for the team.After finishing fifth in 2006 and sixth last year, this year we were 15th in the championship.
Later, as Fairuz sat in the car in the pit, preparing for the practice session prior to qualifying on Saturday, guess what was on the screen in the pits? Man Utd v West Ham! Of course the Great Devils whacked the Hammers 4-2. And now we know how racing drivers take their minds off shambolic seasons.















But later, when the screen was placed right in front of Fairuz's face, you could just sense that it was serious business.
















Seeing that things weren't going so well for A1 Team Malaysia, I crept over to the Team Brazil pits for some time and there was Emerson Fittipaldi (left), the F1 World champion in 1972 and 1974. He's great in more ways than one. He was world champion in the year I was born.

Right now, Emerson is busy polishing the talents of a 16-year old Brazilian teenage sensation Felipe Guimaraes... You should remember that name. This kid is going to drive the A1 Team Brazil car next season... Or so Emerson says...






This next little girl, Rahel Frey, you people better remember. At 19, she's already done rookie sessions for A1 Team Switzerland (and clocked fastest times), finished on the podium in Formula Renault Euroseries and is currently competing in the German F3 Championship. This little girl from Solothurn in Switzerland, everybody, is going to be the first woman F1 driver.
Well, I think highly of Rahel and she looks like a real strong character. Always meaning business. No wonder Malaysian national oil company Petronas is backing her career in F3, much to the dismay of a host of promising drivers from their own country.





It is also interesting that some girls surprise their parents by choosing racing as a career path, while others, more famously, choose just to remain pretty. Like some of those I caught with my little white Nikon Coolpix L2 in Brands Hatch.



The major distractions at Brands Hatch though, were these following beauties. The ones I'd marry and live happily ever after with....




But you know, one of the things I realised over the weekend was that Fairuz, having spent the last decade establishing his racing career in Britain, has a really good fanbase over in Europe, more than he has in Malaysia. All weekend, people were stopping him asking for autographs. Most came with pictures of him in GP2 or the Formula Renault 3.5 World Series.

This grid girl named Tami came looking for Fairuz after the race, seeking autographs on two A1 Team Malaysia posters. "One's for me, the other is for my sort of nephew," she said. Sorry Tami, Fairuz is happily married, with a kid who, most famously, appears in the first ever photograph snapped of him, dressed in a racing suit!!

Like father like son, you may say. And that precedent was set by Tuan Haji Mohd Fauzy Abdul Hamid, Fairuz's motorsport mad father. I shared a few moments in Brands Hatch with Tuan Haji. I must tell you that on many most enjoyable occasions, I've spent hours after Press conferences or interviews, just chatting with Haji Fauzy about racing. This old man can go on for hours talking about his favourite subject!
Here's me with one of Malaysian motorsport's most famous father-and-son combinations after the DNF in the feature race, that happened due to ignition failure just when Fairuz was looking good for a sixth place finish.
You know, as I've written in the New Straits Times long ago when people took my stories a little more seriously, I've always liked these old circuits. Just look at the way they're set up for fans. Try as Hermann Tilke may, he's only distancing the fans from the action. Circuits he designed like Sepang, Bahrain and Shanghai, if they are to be the way of the future, are simply too safe, too faraway, to big. Look at Brands Hatch and Suzuka, or the old defunct Shah Alam Circuit. They're all just comfortably friendly, with action right in your face, not a mile away from where you sit that even the sound feels distanced. Tilke should look at how racing should be for the fans.

In all, it was a nice weekend for the NST's almost forgotten sportswriter (right) and columnist. Yes, Fairuz's column, 'On the Grid with Fairuz Fauzy' appears in the NST sports pages every race day of the F1 World Championship calendar, as it has since the 2006 season.

Thanks to these two guys... A1 Team Malaysia CEO Jack Cunningham (right) and commercial director Owen Leed for making the great trip happen.