Tim Sugden's defence of the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia title got off to a frustrating start in Malaysia.

The GruppeM racer enjoyed an excellent qualifying session, taking pole position for race one. His best lap was almost half a second quicker than Christian Menzel of Germany.

Menzel got a slightly better start and a race-long battle between the two ensued, with only tenths of a second between them, until fate struck on the last lap when Sugden's new Porsche 998 GT3 Cup car suffered a puncture and he could only limp home fifth.

The second race, held immediately before the F1 Grand Prix in the midday heat, turned out even worse for Sugden as the differential unit failed on the warm-up lap and he was unable to even take the start.

The car is new for this series and the engineers could only put the failure down to vibrations when the rear tyre blew in race one - causing unseen damage to the internals of the final drive unit.

The next rounds of this series are in China at the Shanghai circuit on April 19 and 20. Sugden won both races at the circuit last year.

2:55pm Wednesday 26th March 2008

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