Team Cartrade preparing well and on course for the MMER

She said “In this way the sponsor gets international exposure in a world standard event such as the MMER,” while Dato’ Ilyas said “At the Cartrade Group, we believe sports is an important area to help build our beloved nation. We hope and want to see a great race at Sepang on race weekend like SIC always organises. We hope that with this sponsorship we can is in someway help make it a smoother process,”

The Cartrade Group has so far sponsored other events like the Tour de Langkawi, The Super GT Race and the Malaysian edition of the Formula 1 Grand Prix with the MotoGp, A1 Grand Prix and Monsoon Cup all in the pipeline.

Dato’ Ilyas is the team principal for the Team Cartrade-Abt Motorsports which will be competing in the endurance race. The team drivers are helmed by 3 of his sons, who are Fahim, Adam and Helmi who will take turns to drive Lotus 2-Eleven car. Tenku Djan Ley is the manager of the team whose CV includes being the engineer of the A1 team Malaysia and the head of Proton R3.

Among the 3 drivers, Fahmi the youngest of the lot is only 17 years old while his 2 older brothers have been racing for a while including the 2006 edition of the endurance race. According to Helmi, “We know each other’s strength and weaknesses, even better than anybody else and we are going to harness that to our advantage and work as a tight team. Although at the time Fahmi was not old enough to enter the race with us, he has since came very far with his participation in Formula BMW Pacific,”

Fahmi added that they are now focused in their preparation is putting in their final touches for the upcoming race. He said “I am expecting positive practice sessions ahead of raceday. We will need to find the perfect setting for the car and also the optimum driving order between us in this time,”