The Formula One Federation (FIA) has accepted Malaysia’s bid to enter the 2010 and future FIA F1 World Championships, which will see the country’s participation via its own racing team - 1Malaysia F1 Team.

The 1Malaysia F1 Team is a government and private sector initiative, combining the collaborative experience of Malaysian Automakers - Proton and Lotus, coupled with world-class expertise, and backed by Sepang International Circuit (SIC), Motorsports Association of Malaysia (MAM) as well as Automobile Association of Malaysia (AAM) to compete in F1 for the standard contractual period of 10 years. This partnership is further enhanced with the proven capabilities of a group of highly respected Malaysian entrepreneurial investors consisting of Kamarudin Meranun and Tony Fernandes of AirAsia, and SM Nasarudin SM Nasimuddin of NAZA.

The team will be based at Sepang International Circuit - where the cars will be designed, manufactured and tested, making this the first team to be located outside of Europe and only the second, to Ferrari, to have a race track 200 meters from their front door. These cars will be “Made in Malaysia, by Malaysians.”

“1Malaysia F1 Team will fly our colors on the world stage and be the product of our engineers, our universities, our hi-tech centers of excellence,” the Malaysian Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak explained. To date two local universities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, have already been engaged to participate, as has Composites Technology Research Malaysia, a leading composites manufacturing expert, with further announcements on both the sponsorship and technical side expected in the coming days.

Malaysia has been involved in Formula One since 1999 through Sepang circuit, which has been on the race calendar since and will host the 11th F1 Petronas Malaysian GP next year. PETRONAS, a Malaysian owned oil and gas company, has made further advancements in this arena via its sponsorship of the BMW Sauber team for the last four years, so the setting up of a national team, as envisioned by the Prime Minister, is a natural progression to increase the country’s returns from investments in Formula One.

The 1Malaysia F1 Team takes its name from the ‘1Malaysia - People First, Performance Now’ policy mooted by the Prime Minister in June this year as the unifying foundation for all Malaysians to come together in celebrating the co-operation amongst its multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious society for the betterment of the nation.

I believe the team has all the ingredients to succeed. You’ll see!

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