Empire Motorsports Ready For A Comeback In The 2009 MMER

Not a stranger to the MMER, Team Empire Motorsports is set to grab first place in the 2009 Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race (MMER) A1 Class.

Last year the team headed by Team Principle and driver Ashraff Dewal, was leading in their Lotus 2-Eleven in their class up to the last hour in the 2008 MMER, but a broken wheel stud prevented them from finishing the race, completing 263 laps, 45 laps behind the overall winner.

“That’s racing, anything could happen especially in an endurance race,” said Ashraff who have been racing in MMER since 2006 in various Lotus cars.


He went on to explain that they were not using the original wheel studs but aftermarket units were used instead.

“Even by changing to new studs on every tyre change we found that it could not take the stress of racing so we learned our lesson and this time we are sticking with the original studs that is proven to last .”

And that’s not all that have been changed for this year’s MMER, Empire Motorsports 2-Eleven have been upgraded into a GT4 class with a supercharger increasing the horsepower output and a sequential gear system that improves gear shifting time.

The team was spotted doing their first shakedown last night here in Sepang International Circuit (SIC) after an engine rebuilt.

“It’s just to check how the newly rebuilt engine runs and some practice for the pitcrew at the same time.”

The engine was rebuilt by local automotive engineering students from The Otomotive College currently doing their practical training with the Empire Motorsports Team.

“We believe in nurturing new talents along the way and this is one of the ways we can help the community and usually they become like family to the team afterwards.”

This is however not the first time the team have been running the GT4 configuration, the team had entered the Dubai Endurance race earlier this year.

“It’s not a learning curve for us anymore as we already driven the car with the current configuration in a race before, we will take the class championship in MMER this year, I’m not too sure about the overall title though as that means fighting with the faster cars in class O but maybe podium at least.”


Ashraff commented that the separation of the slower classes this new MMER meant that the race will be a lot safer, “I support the move by SIC as looking from experience, the speed gap between us and the B and C class is already quite big, just imagine with speed gap with class O cars, bad things could happen at every overtaking move.

This move also opens up new challenges as more teams with fast cars can participate like the Aston Martin cars. They will give us a good challenge but we are confident to be able to grab first in class.”

Ashraff will be driving with Dennis Lian and James Mitchell who are the same drivers he drove with last year.

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