Max had a disappointing debut in the GP2 Asia Series, with set-up difficulties and race penalties limiting his results in his first races in the Formula 1 feeder series.

He brought his Barwa Addax team Dallara home in 16th and 17th place in the feature and sprint races respectively and clearly these were not the results Max was hoping for.

“It seemed to be going OK in the practice sessions”, he commented, “We were lapping around the top ten on both days before the race weekend, but come the Friday session and then qualifying, I couldn’t find the level of grip I had before.”

Max qualified way down in 21st place and from there his task was always going to be a tough one. He made a tremendous start in Saturday’s feature race and in the opening laps had got up as high as 13th place before a technical infringement handed him a drive-through penalty and effectively took away any chance of a decent result.

“I was enjoying it more in the first race, the car felt better and I was racing with Oliver Turvey quite comfortably before I got the drive-through. Turvey went on to finish in 8th place, so without the penalty it would have been a reasonable result.”

Sunday’s sprint race was problem free for Max who really just wanted to get more experience and get to the finish without any incident. He managed this, but having to start way down the field in the shorter race wasn’t going to give him any chance of a points scoring finish.

“I will leave Abu Dhabi disappointed overall,” he said. “I was hoping for much better results. At the same time I’ve learnt a lot, particularly with the GP2 race procedure and one thing that I was happy about was my level of fitness. It was very hot here and I’ve never raced the length of the feature race before and I found it OK and that was pleasing. With the team we have got a lot of work to do to improve our pace. Even my team mate Luiz Razia who is very experienced at this level, only managed a best of 12th place, so there’s work to do.”

The next rounds of the GP2 Asia series take place at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix track again, but in three months time on February 5th 2010. The next event on Max’s schedule is the classic Macau F3 Grand Prix in the Chinese principality on the weekend of November 21st / 22nd.