Jeffri and Auer score wins in Sepang opener

Nabil Jeffri and Lucas Auer claimed a win apiece as the new JK Racing Asia Series got under way at Sepang last weekend.

Petronas Mofaz Racing's Jeffri made history on Saturday as the first man to win a round of the newly rebranded, former Formula BMW Pacific, series. In front of his home crowd, the Malaysian sprinted past pole sitter Auer on the run down to the first corner and maintained his lead to the chequered flag.  

"I am grateful. The first win of the season, Alhamdullillah, and in my second season,” said Jeffri. “I am proud of myself and thank you to the team, my father, my mother and sponsors.

"I had a really good start. I wasn't really on pace but it was a good race.

"The car was harder to handle in the last three laps as it was getting slippery and my tyres were going off a lot. My engineers miscalculated the tyre and the pressure so there was major understeer but I managed to pull it thorough."

Behind, Afiq Yazid finished 1.8secs adrift in second after initially falling to fourth behind Aaron Chang on lap one. The Meritus GP driver wasn’t finished though and retrieved third a lap later before pressurising Auer into a mistake on the final tour, demoting the Austrian rookie one step on the podium.

Chang took fourth ahead of Eurasia team mate Duvashen Padayachee who fought his way through from seventh on the grid. Sixth went to Hiqmar Daniel with Natasha Seatter, Pasin Lathouras, Jimmy Antunes and Calvin Seibl completing the top ten.

Sunday saw Auer bounce back from his race one mistake to utterly dominate proceedings in the second.

Eurointernational’s rookie led from lights to flag en route to a 2.8secs victory over Yazid and Jeffri who were covered by just half a second at the finish after enjoying a race-long scrap for second.

“It was a good race,” said Auer afterwards. “The start was very good and on the first lap I had to defend my position twice. The second and third drivers were both really quick and were exactly the same pace.”

“It was a nice race, I could drive consistently and set quick times. The tyres, the car and everything was just really really good. I have to thank my team, they did a good job.”

Seven seconds back, Daniel emerged from an equally thrilling battle to claim fourth from Chang, Irfan Ilyas and Padayachee. Freddie Ang, Nandy and Andrew Kharpov completed the top ten.

Catch JK Racing Asia Series action as part of Motors TV’s winter programming.

Tom Hornsby