Zulfahmi's Chronicle

Can Zulfahmi wins any GP this year?

Half way done and remaining 8 GPs with only 49 points awarded to our local hero of Banting.  The best so far only in Qatar at 6^th  and Indianapolis 7^th.   This is something deems unacceptable par with 2012 results for some of his fan including me (at least).

So what is actually happening now?

First things that we should know that Fahmi is getting a totally new bike. According to him this KTM 250cc Moto 3 bike is much more powerful version than his multiple shocking breakthrough record 2012’s bike.  He said this 2013 version allows rider to be much aggressive and be aggressive is a must to fully exploit its hidden potential like what Luis Salom did now.  This is where Fahmi should take some gamble in being aggressive.  Remember what Casey Stoner did with his Ducati and what Rossi did not?
The problem now lies to Fahmi ability to change his riding approach to make this bike works wonder to him.  It is not the bike, but more towards him adjusting to the new bike. Like what my blog tagline is “it is not what you ride, but how you ride that counts”.

The race progress data – the proof

I have to admit that I followed only 2 full races of Zulfahmi which was in Jerez and Sanschering. His disappointment performance makes me wanting to see MotoGP more.  Based on Fahmi’s QP session, he is placed no closer than first top ten qualifiers. This no doubt makes him work harder to chase the front pack in Race session.

Fahmi, in my opinion are getting aggressive but in corners where some of the critics came, he somehow did not defend his line well and all hard work done by him wasted in that fashion.  I am not sure of his corner speed as I do not have data on that.  But this is a sample of my observation of his placing progress in Italian GP Mugello from 18^th in starting grid.

Lap Remaining	Progress 1	Progress 2	Progress 3	Progress 4	Progress 5
15	9	-	-	-	-
15 cont’	8	-	-	-	-
14	8	-	-	-	-
13	8	-	-	-	-
12	8	10	11	12	-
11	12	14	15	-	-
10	14	13	11	10	-
9	9	-	-	-	-
8	10	9	-	-	-
7	8	-	-	-	-
6	9	8	9	-	-
5	10	11	-	-	-
4	8	9	8	-	-
3	8	-	-	-	-
2	9	8	9	10	11
2 cont’	12	-	-	-	-
Last Lap	11	12	11	-	-

 As we could observe, Fahmi performance in Lap Remaining (LR) 12 to 11 is quite disastrous from 8^th placing to a higher 15^th.  But he regained position in LR 7 before losing again in LR 5 at 11^th places.  He then did the hard work in LR4 to back in 8^th before being swollen again in Lap 2 and ended up at 11^th places last lap.

Should Fahmi continue to pickup places down the order while he was in 8^th position, he could be fighting for top 5 in last 2 laps.  But he failed to do that and wasting his effort to 15^th position in LR 11.

The way forward

With 49 points and at 7^th overall position after Indianapolis, Fahmi must take on the gamble and need to beat his 2012 records of 7^th overall position with 128 points for 8 remaining GPs. Now in Brno, he seems not improving with 21^st position in FP1 and worsen at 23^rd in FP2. His time was 2.540 second away with the frontrunner Vinales of Team Calvo (KTM).  Meanwhile, Fahmi is the slowest also if compared to his teammates of Salom (3) and Sissis (14).

I wish Fahmi the very best for QP today and hope he could challenge himself first before thinking to beat others. Malaysia Boleh!!!