SINGAPORE – When Indonesia’s first Formula One driver Rio Haryanto makes his debut with the Manor Racing team at the new season on March 20, he is likely to set the hearts of female fans a flutter.
The only Asian to be on the starting grid boasts not only a chiselled jaw and dashing good looks, but also a hot bod to match.
Rio, 23, will be the third Southeast Asian driver, after a long absence, to compete in Formula One since the championship started in 1950, reported The Jakarta Post. The other two were Malaysian Alex Yoong (2001 and 2002) and Thailand’s Prince Birabongse Bhanudej in the 1950s.
So all eyes will be on Rio, who reportedly lives in Singapore, when he competes against the likes of champion drivers Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel in the 21-race series, starting in Melbourne in two weeks’ time.
Born in Solo, Indonesia, he is a business management graduate, having studied here at private school FTMSGlobal Academy.
Sponsored by Indonesia’s state energy company Pertamina, the rookie driver has managed to capture a huge following in Indonesia, all eager to see their new sports icon flying their national flag high.
“I hope by working hard, I will not only represent Indonesia in F1 but achieve [something],” he said in a press conference in February.
When he is not competing, Rio spends four hours a day to build up his stamina by swimming, jogging, or working out in gym, according to his website.
He likes high-protein food, and even cooks his favourite fish – salmon – often.
Apart from his love of racing, Rio hopes to be involved in his family business – his father runs a company that produces Kiky brand writing books.
He also likes to do his bit for the community. Whenever he returns to his hometown, he would visit an orphanage and share his adventures with the kids, like a big brother hoping to inspire and motivate his younger siblings, according to his website.
Career jump
Rio clinched a place in the Manor team after its owner Stephen Fitzpatrick was impressed by his performance.
He had said in a press statement: “He is tenacious on and off the track and made a big impression on last year’s GP2 battle.”
On Rio’s big fan base in Indonesia, Fitzpatrick said they would be a booster for his team and for F1.
“They are keen to see [Rio] on the grid and we’re confident that we’ll see him enjoying some exciting battles in the year ahead.”
Rio’s racing experience began when he was only six, taking part in the national and international Gokart arena. He joined Formula Asia 2.0 racing competition at 15 and emerged the winner among Asian drivers.
In the following year he came in first again at Formula BMW Pacific 2009 racing competition.
At 17, he was qualified to get Formula 1 super licence from Virgin F1 race in a test in Abu Dhabi in 2010. Since then, he had been racing in the GP2 Series with EQ8 Caterham Racing Team.
Milestones in Rio Haryanto’s career
* Sept. 5, 1999: Wins Pertamina National Kart Championship
* Sept. 23, 2001: Wins Asian Formula Cadet Kart Festival III
* 2005: Wins World Kart Challenge
* 2009: Wins the Formula BMW Pacific championship with 11 victories from 15 races
* Nov. 16, 2010: Becomes world’s youngest driver to test drive an F1
* July 23, 2011: Wins 5th Series of Race 1 at Nurburgring, Germany
* 2011: Voted Person of the Year (POTY) and wins International Motorsport Driver Achievement Award
* July 13, 2012: Passes F1 test (qualified for F1 Super License), Silverstone, the UK
* 2012: Youngest driver at GP2 Series
* June 30, 2013: GP2 Series runner-up, Silverstone
* May 24, 2014: GP2 Series runner-up, Monte Carlo, Monaco
* April 19, 2015: Wins Bahrain sprint-race, first GP2 Series win after four years competing
* July 5, 2015: Storms to his third sprint-race victory in the GP2 Series in Silverstone
* Dec. 18, 2015 : Youth and Sports Minister Imam Nahrawi lobbies businesspeople and State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno to garner support for Rio’s F1 bid
* Feb. 11, 2016: Manor managing director Abdulla Boulsien has meeting with Imam and Rio in Jakarta
* Feb. 17, 2016: Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (KADIN) pledges support for Rio
* Feb. 18, 2016: Becomes Indonesia’s first F1 driver after securing a deal with Manor
chenj@sph.com.sg
The website of the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper being bought by Internet giant Alibaba, has become inaccessible in China during a series of high-level government meetings in Beijing.
Attempts by AFP in China on Friday to open the newspaper’s English and Chinese-language websites returned only error messages saying that the pages could not be displayed.
The scmp.com website was blocked starting on March 3, according to the security website GreatFire.org, which monitors online censorship in China.
China’s Communist Party oversees a vast censorship system – dubbed the Great Firewall – that aggressively blocks sites or snuffs out Internet and TV content and commentary on topics considered sensitive, such as Beijing’s human rights record and criticisms of the government.
Popular social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter are inaccessible in the country, as is Youtube.
Several Western news organisations have accused China of blocking access to their websites in the past, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters.
The SCMP’s Chinese-language public account on WeChat, a popular chat app, was also inaccessible.
The paper’s account on China’s Twitter-like Weibo had also disappeared by Friday.
Alibaba’s purchase of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post for $266 million, announced in December, has sparked fears the newspaper will lose its independent voice, in what analysts see as part of a gradual erosion of press freedoms after the semi-autonomous city was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The skills training is in line with new licensing requirements which will kick in at the start of September. The model aims to provide a career progression pathway for security officers to earn higher wages.
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March 11, 2016 6:48 PM
SINGAPORE – For nearly two years, a 40-year-old fashion designer secretly stole over $80,000 from his ex-lover’s bank account. The pair, who were together for almost 17 years, broke up after the 62-year-old teacher came home to find him in bed with someone else.
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The suspects are believed to have set fire to the door of a unit at Block 703 West Coast Road, according to the Singapore Police Force.
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SINGAPORE, March 11 – BP has appointed a
new head for its integrated supply and trading (IST) business in
the eastern hemisphere, industry sources said on Friday.
Janet Kong, currently head of trading analytics for the
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A run-in with customs at Cairo airport has left Grammy Award winning rock musician Bryan Adams fuming, after a border agent scrawled a number on the Canadian’s prize guitar in paint marker.
Adams, who was in Cairo for a concert at the Giza Pyramids on March 8, posted a picture of the vintage Martin acoustic guitar on his Instagram account.
A number and an illegible word in Arabic had been scrawled in green ink on the guitar’s mahogany side.
“Airport customs graffiti on my 1957 Martin D-18 from Egypt. Back to the luthier #bryanadamsgetup,” Adam’s wrote on Instagram, referring to his latest album Get Up!.
Adams, best known for his hits “18 Till I Die,” “(Everything I Do) I Do it For You,” and “Please Forgive Me”, said his problems with customs had begun on his arrival at Cairo airport.
“We almost didn’t get the equipment into the country, and when we did it was all marked like this,” he told AFP in a Facebook message on Friday.
“There were absolutely no apologies.” A customs official at the airport told AFP that instruments are marked with serial numbers, although usually with stickers.
Regarding the ink, he suggested: “Maybe it wasn’t us?”, although the script was Arabic.
Egyptian wits took to Twitter to mock the incident.
“Doesn’t Adams know that we glued together Tutankhamun with super glue? It’s normal that we write something on a 60 year old guitar,” one wrote, referring to a botched repair of the priceless Tutankhamun funerary mask in Cairo’s museum.
The Oscar-nominated musician said he would still return to Egypt to perform.
“Rest assured, apart from this incident, I love Egypt and look forward to returning again one day,” he told AFP.
“But without the green paint markers please.” It is not the first time that someone has scrawled numbers on one of Adams’ guitars.
In 2015, he complained on Twitter that Air Canada had taken a marker to his guitar, scrawling a serial number in black ink.
A China-based Taiwanese singer who has called for reunification with the mainland drew public ire after returning to his homeland for an operation that could cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.
Huang An has styled himself as a “Taiwan independence buster”, publicly criticising fellow pop stars who appear opposed to reunification with China, where he has lived for more than 15 years.
But on Thursday he returned to Taiwan on a charter flight for an eight-hour heart operation that local media estimated could cost up to Tw$800,000 (S$33,564) – most of which would be covered under the island’s universal healthcare system.
“Mr Huang must not be confident in the level of healthcare where he lives,” Huang Wei-che of the Beijing-sceptic Democratic People’s Party told reporters in Taipei.
“Otherwise why would he want to come back to take advantage of Taiwan’s universal health insurance, despite his controversial arguments in China?” The event also sparked debate on social media, where many called for the government to change the rules around who is covered by the national health insurance.
“A traitor deserves our resources? He should go back to China – a man who betrayed his country only to please China has no right to be treated using Taiwan’s medical resources,” wrote Chia Chi Chang on Apple Daily newspaper’s Facebook page.
Huang made news in January after he posted a video online of 16-year-old K-Pop singer Chou Tzu-yu waving a Taiwanese flag, stoking anger in China and accusations Chou was a pro-independence advocate.
China is a key market for Korean music and Chou was forced to apologise, but in Taiwan public anger was largely directed towards Huang.
Huang, who is also a television host and writer, moved to Beijing in the late 1990s after his star faded at home.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war but Beijing still considers the self-ruled island part of its territory awaiting reunification – by force if necessary.
Tensions eased under president Ma Ying-jeou of the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party, which had ruled the island for almost all of its modern history.
But relations cooled when the Democratic Progressive Party claimed a landslide victory in January elections, with anti-China sentiment a large part of its rise.
