The My Qi-Meritus.Mahara GP2 Asia Team has announced that it has signed Italian Marco Bonanomi for the remaining four events of the GP2 Asia 2008-2009 season. The 23-year-old, from Lecco, Italy will thus participate in the Bahrain event at the Sakhir track on January 23-24 where the Malaysia-based team is competing the third event of the season.

Bonanomi will team with rookie New Zealand Earl Bamber and replaces 32-year-old Alex Yoong, Malaysia's most successful racing driver having successfully competed in a number of series right from Formula Asia to Formula One.

Bonanomi can boast of an impressive motor racing career having secured in his career so far 141 races managing to earn ten wins and 19 podiums. Marco Bonanomi snatched his first GP2 Asia win in the 2008 GP2 Asia series finale in Dubai with team Piquet Sport. Earlier in his career. He was runner up in Formula 3000 Italy and in Euroseries 3000 in 2006.

"I had always held out hope that I would make it back to GP2 Asia after my first win in 2008. I am obviously very pleased that Peter Thompson has now given me a chance to show what I can do," comments Bonanomi. "I'm sure that my experience in a variety of single seater race cars will allow me to adapt quickly to the demands of GP2 Asia, so that I can start to provide the team's engineers and the Bridgestone technicians with useful information on car set-up and tyre performance. Hopefully, what I have learned last year will benefit the team's performance in the race. I now have a good opportunity to repeat what I did last year and will push hard. It is the sort of work I really enjoy, and I'm certainly looking forward to my first run with My Qi-Meritus.Mahara and first outing at the Bahrain track.

Team Principal, Gianfranco Bielli says, "My Qi-Meritus.Mahara is very pleased to have concluded a contract with Marco Bonanomi that will see him become our driver, running alongside Earl Bamber at all events until the end of the season. He has a lot of useful, and relevant, racing experience under his belt, as well as the added advantage of quickly adapting to the different circuits. I'm sure he will prove to be a real asset to the team and help us to maximise its potential for the remaining of the season. With what I believe is a strong driver line up now in place, we can start to focus on the serious business of improving our performance."

Peter Thompson, Team founder: "I want to thank Alex Yoong for participating in the two first Grand Prix: Shanghai where GP2 Asia was one of the support races to F1 week-end and the strange Dubai second weekend where Rains washed away My Qi-Meritus.Mahara team's Dubai goals and the radically wet weather stopped the team's effort."