Hamad Al Fardan withdrew from the Asian F3 Series today after a poor performance in practice saw him one second off the pace. He apparently accused the team of fastest man, Frederic Vervisch, of cheating. They declined to make a protest preferring to walk away. An AF3 Spokesperson reported “We are disappointed that Al Fardan has left the series but we are certainly not happy with the manner in which they have conducted themselves. We have an Independent International scrutineer and TOM’S provide a series engine engineer to ensure complete parity and if any team is not happy they should make a formal protest rather than use the media to air their unfounded concerns. It is not unusual for drivers to under estimate how competitive Asian Motor Sport has become.”

A Spokesman of Team Goddard, Vervisch’s entrant, had this to say. “We have demonstrated that we are able to prepare cars to the highest standard and couple that with two extremely competitive drivers, Rafael Suzuki and Frederic Vervisch, and naturally we will be difficult to beat. We frankly resent the way Al Fardan has used the media in the past to suggest that our team is cheating and that we are in some way influencing the officials. This is unfounded and damaging to the series. TOM’S supply the engines, which are sealed, and the ECU are balloted before qualifying and each race. The TOM’S engineer downloads data after qualifying and each race and the scrutineer can inspect that data. We trust TOM’S, the scrutineer and the FIA ASN appointed officials to do their job and if they suspected any team of not running within the rules we are confident they would catch them. If Al Fardan really believes we are cheating then they should protest us. They have threatened to make a big noise in the media about this issue but we do not want to get involved. There are official systems in place under FIA regulations to deal with these matters and if a competitor is unwilling to use these systems then its up to any party to draw their own conclusions as to why. ”