Its All So Sad

Some weeks ago I heard an interesting story which apparently made it into the newspapers here in Malaysia. It seems that a special fund of a very substantial amount was created and approved by the government years ago to help in the development of motorsports in this country. The plan was to allocate these funds to deserving parties and organisations to help grass roots racing in this country. As mentioned this fund was substantial and amounted to something over 30 million if stories are to be believed.

Now exactly what was done with that money? Where are the grassroots development it was supposed to spawn? Where are those young talents waiting to be discovered and launched to superstardom?

In fact talents were discovered. Just not in motor racing. A whole new generation of lorry drivers have been trained and discovered. Story has it that the money was disbursed to a consortium launched by a bunch of greedy cronies who instead of using the monies for its stated and intended purpose, used it instead to start a driving school to train lorry drivers.

Of course the training of these drivers were paid for by the multinationals that employed them so essentially the many millions simply evaporated into these cronies' pockets. Brilliant! Absolutely stunning! Yet another crony scheme to screw the people.

And so in the meantime, Malaysia only has two drivers of some profile in international competition to cheer for. One being Formula 1 refugee Alex Yoong in A1GP and the other Fairuz Fauzy in GP2.

Much has been said about Alex and sometimes I really pity the dude. Still, he's being realistic and in the A1GP series I think he's got a place where he can compete fairly against the rest. By his standards he's doing alright and witness his podium in Sentul. I heartily congratulate the man. At least he's got that other refugee Jos Verstappen licked. And I heard from a reliable source that before embarking on the A1GP's first race in Brands Hatch, he was quite confident of doing so. Well done Alex. Wish you could have taken that Canadian but hell, its a helluva lot better than you've done anywhere else. After all the (deserved) bashing he's got over the years, he deserves some good press.

And Alex is miles quicker than that overrated Fairuz Fauzy, who has dreams of a Formula 1 drive with attendant F4F1 campaign. He should just give it up and race in tin tops or something. He's simply out of his depth at this level. Last year's GP2 should have told him that he doesn't have the speed. In this year's testing so far, he's been slaughtered by his Super Nova team mate Jose Maria Lopez. Testing times at Paul Ricard here and here. In all the Paul Ricard time sheets Fairuz has been in a hapless 20th position. WOW! In the words of Miss Hilton: That's hot.

Yes you can accuse me of not being very patriotic but heck, you know I'm absolutely right but you just can't handle the truth. The truth is, there are talent waiting to be discovered but whilst the cronism and corruption is prevalent, they'll never get their chance. Its so sad that monies were targetted for the development of these youngsters but now its all gone. Thanks cronies, hope your Ferraris end up in a ditch somewhere.

I'm forgetting one person in this story. Malaysia has one driving talent. So good in fact he won the 2001 Group N World Rally Championship and the Asia Pacific Rally championship several times. The name? Karamjit Singh. Now to win any world championship is no easy task, especially in rallying. But here's a guy who did so. Malaysian to boot. Now you'd imagine that government funding would be channeled to him for he has done the country proud. But of course this didn't happen. Sorry Mr Singh but you ain't got no strong cronies with you thats why.

For f***'s sake. He was a WORLD CHAMPION. But who got the attention instead? Alex Yoong. Fairuz Fauzy. Where did the funding go? Bloody cronies. I mean for god's sake. What the hell is wrong with this country? Travesty is too mild a word to be used for that gross injustice. The cronies deserve to be shot.

Time and again you'll here stories like these in Malaysia and not just in motor racing. The folks with talent never get any chances. Meantime, worthless cronies take the taxpayer dollars and screw the people. All thats left is the well connected talentless to fly the flag..... again and all too often.