SHANGHAI, April 12
(Xinhua) -- Ma Qinghua has kept
himself upbeat but refused to set
a time table after the 25-year-old
Shanghai native narrowly missed his
chance of becoming the first
Chinese-born driver ever to drive a
Formula One car at an FIA-sanctioned
event.
He could have become
China's first ever F1 driver with
his former Spanish team HRT, which
bowed out of the world championships'
2013 racing season for bankrupcy, and
joined Caterham as a test
driver.
Driving a Renault in
Shanghai International Circuit on Friday,
Ma completed his home debut and
finished at the bottem of the
drivers' classification when Practice One
got off this weekend's China
Grand Prix.
His fastest time
of one minute and 43.545 seconds was
nearly 7 seconds behind pace-setter Nico
Rosberg of Mercedes.
"We're
very pleased to see his practice
a successful one," commented Tom Webb,
head of communications of Caterham F1
team.
According to the team
official, Ma was not expected to
run as fast as he can but
to just do his test job for
the racing car.
"We wanted
him to do a number of testing
tasks. We asked him to be
carefully considerate, not making mistakes,
and he did exactly that. We
couldn't ask more from a driver
at his age and his
experience.
"To be honest, the
times at the practices today were
not important," Webb added. "We
didn't ask him to go out
try as fast as possible in his
laps, because that's not what
we required for a FP (free
practice) run."
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