Fernandes gets top Malaysian honour

Team Lotus boss Tony Fernandes was conferred the 'Panglima Setia Mahkota' (PSM), one of Malaysia's highest honours last weekend.

The award is given only to distinguished citizens who have given meritorious service to Malaysia. There are only 250 recipients of the title at any given time.

This is the second accolade Fernandes has received in the last week, having been named one of the 'Most Creative People in Business' for 2011 by New York based business magazine Fast Company in its June 2011 edition. Fernandes is the only Malaysian and ASEAN on the list.

His focus now though shifts to this coming weekend's F1 2011 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and Fernandes maintains the team is heading there in a 'positive frame of mind'. He also added that the squad will have 'some more good news to unveil'.

"Monaco was obviously a very important weekend for both Team Lotus on and off track, and Team AirAsia who came of age on Friday. This will be my first trip to Canada and I am looking forward to going to what I am told is one of the best races of the season," he said

"Off track we have some more good news to unveil and on track we will have another chance to see how much more we have learnt about the car.

"Monaco was not the best environment for us to make significant steps forward with the new package, but having had such good reliability recently we have a lot of data that will help us put in another good performance in Montreal.

"With all that in mind we will all head there in a very positive frame of mind," he concluded.