Farriz Fauzy, MOFAZ Racing Gunning For Top Prize  

Introduced to the world of motorsports at a very young age and coming from a family of motor racing, Farriz Fauzy understands fully the concept ‘anything can happen in motor racing’ – on its day, a lowered-powered machine can upstage any of its faster rivals – especially in an endurance race.

In fact, Farriz, himself, is a testament to that famous motor racing cliché as he and his team-mates at Honda Malaysia Racing Team took the 2004 Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race overall title in a Class A Honda Civic; edging out the more powerful modified cars in the open class.

Last year, at the inaugural Sepang 1000-kilometer race, Farriz, Lai Wee Sing and Tseu Chee Kee – competing under the banners of R-Engineering - took their Class 2 1600cc Honda Civic to second overall; beating all the others 1900cc Class 1 cars except for the trio of Type R Racing Team. After battling closely for nearly nine hours around the 5.543-km circuit, both teams completed 182 laps and equaling the total number of laps managed by their rival.   

Come 2010, Farriz is back – returning with the same partnership and their trusted Civic under MOFAZ Racing with an ultimate aim of defending their title; but always one eye to the top prize – the overall title. Though that was never declared openly, people who knew Farriz, Lai, Tseu and the spirit of R-Engineering fully understood their targets – winning the top prize.

Like others in the Malaysian motor racing fraternity, Farriz has been looking forward to the second edition of the Sepang 1000-km race, which will be held at Sepang Circuit from June 3 to 5; and with most of Malaysia’s top racing drivers on the starting grid.

Introduced last year, the Sepang 1000-kilometer Race takes away cars below 1900cc from the previous MMER to compete in their own endurance race. This year’s race will be held on Saturday (June 5). Qualifying will be on the preceding day on Friday while Thursday is the Official Free Practice.

A total of 54 cars had registered for this year’s race; beating last year’s participation of 52 cars. They will compete in two classes: Class 1 for cars between 1601cc and 1900cc and Class 2 for cars below 1600cc.    

Farriz said: “Sepang 1000km, for my experience, I think, it’s more fun than MMER. Simply because, the cars that are participating only in two classes - 1.6 class to 1.8 class. This obviously will create some sort of one make endurance race knowing most teams are using similar race car model which we all know what it is for each category.

“Maybe, there will be a minority of them could be using a rare model, nevertheless the race car power usually are quite similar compare to others which leads to hard overtaking or defending your
position for most of the time when racing.

“In terms of budget, is more suitable and less costly as compared to MMER. This will encourage or invite more people to participate … so, with the S1K, we can put our motorsports industries into the next level,” said Farriz, who like his famous brother Fairuz, had experience competing top class international series.

According to Farriz, as a good and competitive racing event and with suitable budget, the S1K was also ideal for those aspiring to be racers drivers to start their career as a saloon car driver. Furthermore, he said, it was also ideal for those who wanted to experience the fun; competing against top class racers in a Formula 1 track.    


Asked whether he believes that ‘defending a title is more difficult than winning it’, Fairuz said: “
Well, Being a racing driver, I believe every driver have a single motive, that is to win … of course, this will generate some intense pressure and high expectation from some people since we did well last year.

“But, honestly, for me, It doesn’t matter how many times you have won, as long as you can keep your concentration straight when racing without making any silly mistakes, focus on your team and race car for room to improve and keep mentally and physically fit … that’s all that matters,” said Farriz, who is happy to be partnering both Lai and Tseu again.

“Both of them are my good friends … we have been working together preparing the car and also we have few common related matters. I feel comfortable working with them as my team-mates.

“We know that Lai a fast driver and has showed us a tremendous records of winning few other races locally. Tseu is well known for his expertise in technical issues and have been racing for
quite sometimes. And, he had shown vast improvement in performing better result in
racing from year to year.

“I believe the key to our success are contributed from a good teamwork and communication. We always worked as a team, we planned into every single areas, such as giving productive feedback , planning, setting up pit strategy and everything.  

“And, I firmly believe that this combination will help us to achieve previous success, hopefully this year we can aim for overall title,” said Farriz, who would be competing under the banner of R-Engineering Racing Team that would be supported by MOFAZ RACING, R-ENGINEERING and LINKS RACING.

While admitting that he was not fully sure of how stiff the competition will be this year, Farriz said that that it would definitely be challenging. “I am not too sure now as it would depend whether the participants would be well prepared or not. But, I am certain that the level of competitiveness will be high,” he said.

He also expects that the cars would be going faster this year on the new Federal tyres, which is the Official Tyres for this year’s S1k race. Last year, the competitors raced on Indonesian-made Achilles tyres.

“I have tested the Federal tyres … it seems that the tyres performed slightly better than last year’s tyres that we used; especially it holds better grip in the corner … which carries higher speed, I reckoned that we should be clocking better times this year.

“Maybe, even two or three seconds faster if the car is properly set up with good track temperature … our preparations have been quite general. For me, whether in any races that I’m participating, we basically plan early; improve mistakes that we learned in the previous race.

“Last but not least, obviously upgrading our race car at optimum performance,” added Farriz.


For further details, contact the National Press Officer Norlina Ayob at 019-3174555 or e-mail to norlina.ayob@sepangcircuit.com.my

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