Thaindian News

Chennai, March 12 (IANS) India’s Aditya Patel will be doing another season in the Formula BMW Pacific series after switching from Team Eurasia Motorsport to Atlantic Racing Team (ART).
The 20-year-old commerce student from Chennai finished ninth overall and fourth in the Rookie class in his debut season last year, but hopes to finish higher this year with the Canada-based team.

The 15-round 2009 series commences in April and will be run in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Japan before climaxing at Macau which will host the final leg of the championship.

Explaining the shift from Eurasia to ART, Aditya’s father Kamlesh Patel, himself a former rally and racing driver, said: “ART have offered a good deal for Aditya, who will now have the benefit of a better set of engineers than last year.”

In terms of costs, the difference is negligible with a budget of 150,000 Euros (about Rs.10 million) for the entire season.

“The team is also helping me to raise sponsorship, but for the moment Aditya will not be doing any testing outside the official sessions,” said Patel in a chat with IANS.

Each day of testing costs 2,500 Euros. “It is definitely beyond our budget. So, we have decided to restrict our testing to the official sessions that comes with the package,” Patel said.

Aditya, the 2008 national champion in the Formula Rolon-Chevrolet class, made an unsuccessful bid to secure scholarship of 50,000 Euros offered to four drivers by BMW Motorsport on the basis of pre-championship trial runs held in Dubai earlier this year.

Incidentally, ART ran just one car last year and finished sixth and last in the team championship with 130 points, behind the fifth placed Eurasia (137). Their lone driver, 14-year old Gabriel Chaves from Colombia was fourth overall on the leaderboard.

For this year, ART is saddled with a second car and it decided on Aditya, who the team believes is a championship prospect.

“In regards to Aditya’s near future, we are certain that we will improve his racing experience and career. Our objectives are very clear and defined - Aditya will be a front runner and primed for winning as many races for us as he can,” says Ingo Strackerjan, team manager for ART.

“We watched Aditya’s progress last year while in direct competition against him. This will now help Lucas Strackerjan, ART’s race engineer, to guide him in the right direction,” he adds.

Aditya’s car has been partially funded and sponsored by JK Tyre, Amaron, Speed, MAS Holdings and AJ Worldwide.