Hafizh Syahrin

Hafizh Syahrin
Hafizh (behind) at the 2019 Malaysian Grand Prix
Nationality	Malaysian
Born	(1994-05-05) 5 May 1994 Selangor, Malaysia
Current team	NTS RW Racing GP
Bike number	55
Motorcycle racing career statistics MotoGP World Championship Active years 2018–2019 Manufacturers Yamaha, KTM Championships 0 2019 championship position 23rd (9 pts) Starts Wins Podiums Poles F. laps Points 37 0 0 0 0 55 Moto2 World Championship Active years 2011–2017, 2020– Manufacturers Moriwaki, FTR, Kalex, Speed Up, NTS Championships 0 2020 championship position 21st (21 pts) Starts Wins Podiums Poles F. laps Points 92 0 3 0 1 368

Hafizh Syahrin Abdullah (born 5 May 1994) is a Malaysian motorcycle racer. In 2018, he became the first ever Southeast Asian to participate in the MotoGP category.

Career

Early career

Hafizh was born on 5 May 1994 in Selangor, Malaysia, and grew up in Selangor. He began his career at the age of 9, in pocket bikes; he eventually acquired the nickname "King of Pocket Bikes", when he was discovered by team manager Barry Leong purely by chance. It was not long before his talent began to show after his racing debut on pocket bikes the following year. Dominating the pocket bike category soon after, he was discovered by Leong at one of the pocket bike tracks.

In 2007, at the age of 13, Hafizh made his debut in the Cub Prix championship in dominating style finishing his first year on the Yamaha LC135 Cup class second overall.

His form continued the following year as the Petronas Sprinta Raceline team's then youngest rider finished on the podium taking 3rd overall in the Yamaha Givi Cup in 2008, in the process also making waves through his spot entries in the Novice category with impressive results.

Hafizh started the 2009 season on a high winning the opening race of the season at Alor Setar with a win in the Novice category. With 7 wins out of 8 rounds, with the other being a podium finish, his dominance in the category was unrivalled that he opted to forego the final two rounds. The youngster switched to race against his more illustrious and seasoned seniors in the Expert category with podium results. He finished third in the Asia Road Racing Underbone 115cc Championship.

Graduating to take on the expert category in 2010, the switch was seamless as Hafizh literally broke down all the barriers and tore the competition apart. Despite a massive revamp in the technical regulations that led to the renaming of the expert category to become the CP130 category; these changes did little to rattle Syahrin's cage.

By the time the season drew to a close in Penang's Padang Kota Lama, the 16-year-old had obliterated the competition to emerge as the championship's youngest ever CP130 champion, erasing the record set by Norizman Ismail who was the Expert champion in 2005 at the age of 20.

2010 was also significant as the 16-year-old made the step up to the bigger league, the Petronas Asia Road Racing Championship aboard a 600cc SuperSport bike. Against a much older and experienced field, the youngster held his own to finish his debut season in a respectable 12th from 39 riders. He finished fourth in the same series in 2011. He moved into the Spanish Moto2 series in 2012, finishing sixth.

Moto2 World Championship

In 2012, wild-card Hafizh led during the middle stages of Malaysian Grand Prix on his way to fourth place. The result was later promoted to a third-place finish, after Anthony West's results were expunged in November 2013. In 2013, Hafizh made several more wildcard appearances. He scored a point at his home race in Malaysia.

Hafizh moved into Moto2 full-time in 2014 riding a Kalex for the Petronas Raceline Malaysia team and finished overall in position 19 with 42 points. He made further improvement in 2015 by collecting 64 points (in 16th position) with a season best finish of 5th at the Japanese Grand Prix. In 2016, Hafizh surprised other riders and impressed commentators by finishing 4th at 3 Grands Prix (Qatar, Catalunya and British) and finishing 10 of the Grands Prix in the top 10. He collected 118 points along season 2016 overall in 9th position.

In 2017, he made a slow start to the season with an average performance before making an impact when he took a podium in 3rd position, then later up to 2nd position because of Aegerter's disqualification for his win at the San Marino Grand Prix. Later, he had another stunning result by taking 3rd podium on his career when he get 3rd position in a wet race at the Japanese Grand Prix (two podiums within 3 races). He ended that season in the top 10 with 106 points overall.

Sadly, after the years since he debuted in Malaysian Cup Prix with Raceline and main sponsor Petronas, he parted ways with Raceline and then announced that he joined a new outfit, the Sepang International Circuits (SIC) Moto2 team, which collaborated with Petronas as main sponsor. However, Petronas later announced they would quit as main sponsor of the Moto2 SIC outfit and was looking forward more to the talent development on SIC's feeder team in Moto3. Hafizh rode as SIC Moto2's sole rider.

MotoGP World Championship

Just a week before the 2018 MotoGP Sepang pre-season test, Jonas Folger made a surprising announcement by stating that he would not compete in the 2018 season to recover from a health problem. Then, the head of the Monster Yamaha Tech 3 team, Herve Poncharal had a discussion with SIC CEO, Razlan, and their main sponsor Yamaha Asia, about the possibility of replacing Folger with Syahrin.

He had the opportunity to take part in the early pre-season test at the Circuit of Buriram. This was also boosted by the inability of other riders on the list who have contract with other teams, including Yonny Hernandez. Syahrin, nicknamed "El Pescao", made an impressive performance on his 1st ever run on a MotoGP bike by clocking a lap time as good as the other rookies who have been on the circuit longer than him.

Monster Yamaha Tech 3 was delighted about his potential and signed Hafizh to fill Jonas Folger's seat for the 2018 season.

2018

Hafizh did well in his first MotoGP season when he fought for Rookie of the Year before losing out to Franco Morbidelli.

His best result came in the second round at Argentina when he finished 9th after starting from 23rd.

On 6 June 2018, Tech 3 announced that they would retain Syahrin for 2019, in a new era for Hervé Poncharal's team that will see him make the switch to a factory spec KTM machine.

2019

Syahrin would again ride for Tech 3, this time riding a KTM alongside new rookie teammate Miguel Oliveira. After nine races, the team announced they would not renew his contract and will replace him with Brad Binder for the 2020 season. Binder later moved up to the Factory KTM Team for 2020, following Johann Zarco taking the decision to leave the team after only 1 year of his 2 year deal. This led to Syahrin being instead replaced by Iker Lecuona.

Return to Moto2

2020

After losing his spot in MotoGP, Hafizh returned to Moto2 with the Aspar Team for the 2020 season.

Career statistics

Grand Prix motorcycle racing

By season

Season	Class	Motorcycle	Team	Race	Win	Podium	Pole	FLap	Pts	Plcd
2011	Moto2	Moriwaki	Petronas Malaysia	1	0	0	0	0	0	NC
2012	Moto2	FTR	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	1	0	1	0	1	16	23rd
2013	Moto2	Kalex	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	4	0	0	0	0	1	29th
2014	Moto2	Kalex	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	18	0	0	0	0	42	19th
2015	Moto2	Kalex	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	18	0	0	0	0	64	16th
2016	Moto2	Kalex	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	18	0	0	0	0	118	9th
2017	Moto2	Kalex	Petronas Raceline Malaysia	18	0	2	0	0	106	10th
2018	MotoGP	Yamaha	Monster Yamaha Tech 3	18	0	0	0	0	46	16th
2019	MotoGP	KTM	Red Bull KTM Tech 3	19	0	0	0	0	9	23rd
2020	Moto2	Speed Up	Aspar Team	14	0	0	0	0	21	21st
Total				129	0	3	0	1	423

By class

Class	Seasons	1st GP	1st Pod	1st Win	Race	Win	Podiums	Pole	FLap	Pts	WChmp
Moto2	2011–2017, 2020–present	2011 Malaysia	2012 Malaysia		92	0	3	0	1	368	0
MotoGP	2018–2019	2018 Qatar			37	0	0	0	0	55	0
Total	2016–Present				129	0	3	0	1	423	0

Races by year

(key) (Races in bold indicate pole position, races in italics indicate fastest lap)

Year	Class	Bike	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	Pos	Pts
2011	Moto2	Moriwaki	QAT	SPA	POR	FRA	CAT	GBR	NED	ITA	GER	CZE	IND	RSM	ARA	JPN	AUS	MAL 20	VAL			NC	0
2012	Moto2	FTR	QAT	SPA	POR	FRA	CAT	GBR	NED	GER	ITA	IND	CZE	RSM	ARA	JPN	MAL 3	AUS	VAL			23rd	16
2013	Moto2	Kalex	QAT	AME	SPA	FRA 21	ITA	CAT 18	NED	GER	IND	CZE	GBR	RSM	ARA	MAL 15	AUS	JPN	VAL Ret			29th	1
2014	Moto2	Kalex	QAT 15	AME 15	ARG 20	SPA 21	FRA 15	ITA 25	CAT Ret	NED 10	GER 18	IND 7	CZE 13	GBR 8	RSM 20	ARA 11	JPN 8	AUS Ret	MAL Ret	VAL 16		19th	42
2015	Moto2	Kalex	QAT 12	AME 6	ARG 10	SPA 12	FRA 9	ITA Ret	CAT 14	NED 15	GER 16	IND Ret	CZE 14	GBR 16	RSM 18	ARA 7	JPN 5	AUS 16	MAL 8	VAL Ret		16th	64
2016	Moto2	Kalex	QAT 4	ARG 6	AME 16	SPA 11	FRA 8	ITA 5	CAT 4	NED Ret	GER 7	AUT 21	CZE 6	GBR 4	RSM 7	ARA 14	JPN 13	AUS Ret	MAL 5	VAL 15		9th	118
2017	Moto2	Kalex	QAT Ret	ARG 10	AME 11	SPA 13	FRA 11	ITA 12	CAT 9	NED 8	GER 11	CZE 15	AUT 10	GBR 17	RSM 2	ARA 16	JPN 3	AUS 16	MAL 6	VAL 6		10th	106
2018	MotoGP	Yamaha	QAT 14	ARG 9	AME Ret	SPA 16	FRA 12	ITA 12	CAT Ret	NED 18	GER 11	CZE 14	AUT 16	GBR C	RSM 19	ARA 18	THA 12	JPN 10	AUS Ret	MAL 10	VAL 10	16th	46
2019	MotoGP	KTM	QAT 20	ARG 16	AME 18	SPA 19	FRA 14	ITA Ret	CAT Ret	NED 15	GER 16	CZE Ret	AUT Ret	GBR 13	RSM 15	ARA 21	THA 20	JPN 19	AUS 15	MAL 16	VAL 15	23rd	9
2020	Moto2	Speed Up	QAT 19	SPA 6	ANC Ret	CZE 9	AUT Ret	STY	RSM Ret	EMI 19	CAT 18	FRA 15	ARA 19	TER 13	EUR Ret	VAL 19	POR 21					21st	21

External links

• Profile on MotoGP.com