The Turkmenistan Tourism And Sports Minister, his Excellency Gurbanmammet Elyasor paid a visit to Sepang International Circuit (SIC) today.

The minister and his delegations first had a tour of the Malaysian Automotive Museum located at SIC Welcome Centre before going to the pit building to view the race control, timing room, media centre and especially to view the best seat to watch a race in SIC, the Perdana Suite.

His Excellency also went for a brief drive on the circuit using a Volkswagen Touareg to see how the world standard circuit is like.

After the drive the minister explained that they (Turkmenistan) are in the planning stages of building a circuit in that country.

He added that they are also looking at hosting F1 in the hopes of making Turkmenistan more known to the rest of the world.

For that, they are looking at Malaysia as their partner in building the race circuit and developing motorsports in Turkmenistan.

“We are grateful that the minister had a keen interest in SIC not in just racing but its other aspects as well like management and the business side of it,” said SIC Corporate Communications Chief Azlan Akil.

Turkmenistan is a Turkic country in Central Asia. Until 1991, it was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen SSR).

It is bordered by Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the southwest, Uzbekistan to the northeast, Kazakhstan to the northwest, and the Caspian Sea to the west.