Pakistan’s Adnan clinches 4th position in World Series Race

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LAHORE: Pakistani racing driver Adnan Sarwar finished 4th at the Sodi World Series Masters Cup final race at the Dubai Autodrome. This remains the best finish for a Pakistani driver in an international race.
Qualifying and starting from 5th place, Adnan fell back to 8th after an incident in turn one but then climbed back up the grid, overtaking four drivers to finish only 0.2 seconds behind third place finisher Fabian Lunz of South Africa and ahead of drivers from Germany, Ireland and England among others. Home hero Rami Azzam from UAE won the race with France finishing a close second.
The last 10 laps of the race saw a fierce battle between South Africa and Pakistan with the two drivers trading places and overtaking each other for third place with time running out in the end for Adnan with less than a car length preventing him from scoring the first international podium for Pakistan.
The 2010 international racing season for Adnan comes to an end in the year that has seen a Pakistani finishing in top five positions in almost all races for the first time. The 2011 international racing programme will be announced next month.
“It was a great race and a lot of fun overtaking from eighth after the turn-one incident. We were so close to bringing home our first international trophy and fell short by 0.2 seconds but that’s racing. A wonderful result considering we have no race tracks in Pakistan and get no chance to practice when our competitors have the best facilities in the world available to them. It’s heartbreaking to lose third place by such a small margin.
I wanted to bring a trophy back as I was racing for the five fans who died in Rawalpindi last Sunday and came agonizingly close. We are racing some of the top drivers in this discipline and to break into the top three and to challenge for wins, we have to get more support behind us which will allow us a proper practice schedule. However, the raw talent of our people can not be ignored anymore when we are constantly finishing in top 5 despite not having any government support. All thanks to my sponsors Bank Alfalah and NJI Life for making this possible and the end of a good year,” Adnan said.