Azlan Still in “Catch-Up” Mode Despite Early Speed

Naquib Azlan says he is “very pleased” that he has proven himself capable of mixing it up at the head of the field in Porsche Carrera Cup Asia so far this season despite lacking “five or six years of experience” compared to many of his rivals.

EBM driver Azlan earned a seat in the series off the back of an impressive showing at the championship’s Talent Pool Assessment Days last November in Sepang, and has so far proven the quickest of the drivers with no prior Carrera Cup experience.

Stepping up from GT4 and one-make competition in both his native Malaysia and Japan, Azlan made an immediate impact by taking pole for his debut in Shanghai in March, and was credited with a half-points victory in that race when a start-line accident in which he was involved caused the race to be red-flagged and not resumed.

He took another sweep of poles at Zhuhai and also topped one of the qualifying sessions in the most recent round of the series at Fuji Speedway this month, backing up his Shanghai win a strong drive to second behind series leader Marcus Amand.

“It’s been really good so far,” Azlan told Sportscar365 ahead of the Fuji round. “I think being able to enter this championship, the expectation was that it was going to be tricky because it is considered to be one of the toughest championships in Asia.

“You would always see top European drivers come over here, and you’ve have Porsche Junior drivers who have progressed into works drivers recently, like [Alessandro] Ghiretti and Enzo Trulli. So the challenge was always going to be tough.

“That was something I was really looking forward to because I wanted to see how I fared against the top ranks. And we showed performance-wise in the first two rounds that, yeah, we can fight it out at the front here.

“I’ve been very pleased with the performance, myself and together with the team, EBM, together with Porsche Malaysia, we’ve done a real good job in extracting the most out of the car most of the time when we go on track.”

He added: “After the Official Test Days in Zhuhai, it was, I was still sceptical whether it was genuine pace or not. You’re thinking, ‘maybe they’re just hiding’. But when we came into Shanghai, we knew it was genuine and we were really happy with that.

“Obviously, there’s always tons of stuff still to work on. We’re just focussing on ourselves on improving what we need to improve and see where we go from there.”

Managing expectations after taking a double pole on his debut has been one of the challenges to overcome, Azlan admitted, with his race results not matching his early qualifying speed.

“That was really one of the things that we needed to work on,” he said. “Mostly it was mentally. We knew we had the performance, but I think personally I probably just tried to overreach myself a little bit.

“I think it was important for me to remind myself that you can’t take shortcuts and jump leaps. We have to take it one step at a time, learning as we go, and just continue improving wherever we can in all aspects.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface at this point. I’m trying to catch up about five or six years of experience compared to the rest, so it’s a big catch-up game for me. So I’m just trying to adapt as quickly as I can.”

Azlan sits sixth in the championship at the halfway point with a little under half the tally accrued by Amand, who enjoys a comfortable 37.5-point advantage over nearest rival Rodrigo Dias Almeida.

The 25-year-old says he is more focused on his rate of improvement than on his championship position currently.

“I think if you’re a racing driver and you enter a championship not thinking of winning, you shouldn’t be doing it, probably,” he said. “But it’s not heavily on my mind.

“Obviously we have some work to do and stuff to improve on, but once we iron those things out, who knows, maybe if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. We’re just going to give it our all and see where we come out.”

Azlan, however, doesn’t see finishing as top Talent Pool driver as a specific goal.

“At the end of the day, being top Talent Pool driver, but finishing P3, it’s not something to get excited about for me,” he said. “I’m still trying to aim to be on top of the rest.”