The twenty drivers that arrived at the Lake Toba race site four days ago will now have to wait another day for the BRM Qualifying session at the Kopiko Grand Prix of Indonesia to take place. Strengthening north-easterly winds forced Race Director Luis Miguel Ribeiro and his H2O Racing colleagues to postpone it until Sunday morning.

Amongst those drivers now heading back to the race pits are the Sharjah Teams’ Sami Seliö and Ferdinand Zandbergen. “Going around the circuit I felt immediately that there was nothing we could do in water conditions like that” said Seliö. “It’s a big shame for the thousands of spectators that had gathered around the shoreline that we couldn’t make the show.”

Seliö has been extremely impressed with what he has seen at this brand new host venue of Balige on the southern shore of Lake Toba. “The organisation here has been amazing and just seeing how much they have invested here makes me understand just how hard they are trying to attract tourism to this region.”

Earlier he had shown good pace in the First Free Practice Session. “Conditions were tricky to start with but after I came back in for a prop change I quickly began to get on top of them” said Seliö. His Sharjah team-mate Zandbergen had a technical issue with his Mercury unit but after the mechanics had swopped his engine over he was able to post some reasonable lap times whilst running through his prop selection.

With the conditions set to change overnight the BRM Qualifying session will now commence at  08:00 local time (01:00 GMT) and the Kopiko Grand Prix of Indonesia will get under way at 12:00 local time (05:00 GMT).