Eshan Pieris continues to excel at Rotax Asian Championship

Once again, Eshan Pieris did Sri Lanka proud, taking third place in Round 5 of the Rotax Max Asia held recently at the Elite Plus Speedway Circuit Malaysia.

He drives for RL Karting Team Malaysia and is currently an undergraduate at Monash University in Malaysia. In this event, he had to overcome technical issues in the heats and pre-qualifiers to become a podium finisher. Eshan, who was heading the pack, faced carburettor issues in Heat 1 and then electrical issues in Heat 2. This meant he started of 18th – the last on the grid for the pre-finals. Eshan’s excellent skills, grit and determination saw him race from last to finish third in the pre-finals. He then went on to take third place in the finals. He also recorded the fastest lap time in both the pre-final and finals. A feat he achieved in Round 2 of this championship as well.

Earlier in the year, Eshan took second place in Round 2 and third place in Round 3 of the Rotax Max Challenge Asia. Eshan started go-karting just five years ago and has participated in international races with RL Karting only for a couple of years.

Speaking about his international karting career Eshan said: “I started off by doing the Asian Rotax Series in the senior class before moving on to DD2s and Senior X30 this year. It took me a little time to get up to where I wanted to be – which was in the top three. But after two years of hard work I am running there consistently.”

He has just commenced his undergraduate studies at Monash Sunway Malaysia, and now has the challenge of balancing studies with his racing and extensive physical training regime. He went on to say “It isn’t easy but I’m really happy that I’m able to bring credit to Sri Lanka and hopefully to Monash University in the fields of go-kart racing. I am also extremely grateful and appreciative of the support from my racing team, specially my coach and manager Aaron Lim and the university without which I would not have been able to succeed.”

He recently had the opportunity to race for the very first time in Europe at Castelletto, Italy with the KMS Hungary team. Eshan qualified in the top 10 which is impressive given the quality of the field. Unfortunately, the rest of the weekend was not as successful. He was very quick but just lacked some of the race pace of the more experienced competitors around him. Eshan certainly seems to have taken the positive aspects from this exposure.

“With a lot of help from my team, I really surprised myself in terms of pace. Being two tenths off pole in qualifying is a great start and I was only a tenth off the top five! I’m still short on experience but I think what I’ve shown is that I can do it, I just need a little more exposure on these tracks.”