Meritus Racing has announced an ambitious plan to be ready to compete in F1 by 2016, making them the first South East Asian country to have an entry in the pinnacle of motorsports, and they might do it in a made-in Malaysia car.

The Malaysian national team have developed step by step on the Asian motorsport ladder, winning 32 internationals titles in 12 years and have recently expanded to GP2 Asia, where they are the only Asian team granted a license to race in the series. As part of the programme, they have now announced plans to expand their race engineering services to the main GP2 Series by 2011.

The main GP2 Series is the F1 development series for drivers and teams. One of the new F1 teams for 2010, 'CamposF1, has spent the last four seasons in the series in order to train and develop their motorsport technology.

Meritus are very ambitious and their long-term plan is take a step-by-step approach to achieve their ultimate goal. The first step is to provide the necessary training to develop a National Malaysian Motorsport Technical (MMT) centre and establish a place of engineering excellence to train Malaysian engineers and technical staff ready to design and produce formula cars for export and hopefully to design a Malaysian F1 car by 2016.

Team boss Firhat Mokhzani said the ambitious plan, which has been fuelled by the team's unprecedented successes since 1996, is within its grasp as it has been quietly setting up the blueprints which will see it race in Europe in two years time.

"Meritus are the only Asian team to be given an entry license to race in the GP2 Asia Series and have invested RM25million to date, said Firhat, "and this is partly because of our engineering success, our 32 Asian motorsport titles and dominating the Formula BMW and Formula V6 series for the last six years. These are the Asian stepping stones to racing in the pinnacle of motorsports, Formula 1.

"Malaysia and Asian motorsport offer a very cost effective ladder for drivers to step up from karting and provide all the career steps for ambitious drivers focusing on F1. The big difference for Asian families following a lucrative sporting career for their child is that these Asian steps are at least 50% cheaper than similar European ladders.

"Meritus is planning to expand our current GP2 Asian operations to include GP2 Europe by 2011. Our GP2 teams will basically be the Malaysian National F1 Development team as well as training our Malaysian race engineers.

"The first goal is to develop our Malaysian Motorsport engineering technology and to develop a sustainable Malaysian motorsport industry for the export of formula cars to the multi billion dollar motorsport markets in Europe and North America. This will provide a sustainable profit generating industry which will absorb the development costs to structure and develop an engineering design team.

"We would be honoured one day to race as the National team in F1 and we hope to be ready to build our own F1 car with Malaysian engineers to achieve that goal by 2016."

"The team have already helped drivers who have gone on to race in Formula 1, drivers such as Narain Karthikeyan and Takuma Sato, Ricardo Rosset were all Meritus graduates. In fact David Coulthard's first tests in a slicks and wings formula car was with Meritus in 1990.

"Our 2003 Formula BMW champion, Ho Pin Tung tested a Williams F1 car and our own super star Jazeman Jaafar was invited by Sir Frank Williams to try the team's F1 simulator two years ago."

Firhat said all of these efforts have helped generate profit and global awareness for Malaysia but nothing would beat the exposure of developing a national team to race in Formula 1.

"Our feet are firmly on the ground," he insists, "and our short-term goal is simple, to win races in GP2 Asia and to have a go at winning the 2010 GP2 Asia Championship. To do that, Meritus has already begun their search for top class drivers."