{"id":9527,"date":"2010-11-10T13:08:19","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T18:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=9527"},"modified":"2010-11-10T13:08:19","modified_gmt":"2010-11-10T18:08:19","slug":"kovalainen-to-sit-out-friday-practice-at-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/kovalainen-to-sit-out-friday-practice-at-finale\/","title":{"rendered":"Kovalainen to sit out Friday practice at finale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Heikki Kovalainen will sit out this weekend&#8217;s initial Friday practice session in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n<p>The Finn will defer to Malaysian team Lotus Racing&#8217;s Kuala Lumpur born test driver Fairuz Fauzy, who has had a similar role at a few other grands prix this season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The real challenge for me is to try and push on what will be a very green track,&#8221; said the 28-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>The similarly-aged Kovalainen, however, is set to re-sign with the team for 2011, after recently staying with team boss Tony Fernandes in Malaysia and even buying $150,000 in shares of his AirAsia airline.<\/p>\n<p>Lotus is currently locked in a bitter naming dispute with the separate Group Lotus, but Fernandes insisted the team is looking fervently at stepping up in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We went about our business in our own unassuming way, letting our actions speak louder than our words, and we will continue to do just that,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>And Kovalainen insisted that the Abu Dhabi finale is one final fling before &#8220;focusing entirely on next year&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #888888;\">\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Heikki Kovalainen will sit out this weekend&#8217;s initial Friday practice session in Abu Dhabi. The Finn will defer to Malaysian team Lotus Racing&#8217;s Kuala Lumpur born test driver Fairuz Fauzy, who has had a similar role at a few other grands prix this season. &#8220;The real challenge for me is to try and push on &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[2348,5262,568,5340,517,912,62],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9528,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9527\/revisions\/9528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}