Harare — AFTER spending one year competing in the Formula BMW Pacific series in Asia, young Axcil Jefferies has moved a gear up in his promising career as a motor racing driver.

The 15-year-old Zimbabwean motor racing ace will this year compete in the tough Formula BMW European Championship that runs alongside eight Formula One events.

Jefferies returned home last week after spending two months in Europe drive-testing with several European teams in preparation for the forthcoming 2010 season.

The young Zimbabwean driver, whose goal for 2010 is to win the European Formula BMW championship, first spent four days testing at Brandse Hatch, which is a famous British racing circuit.

After that, he went to Wales where he did another two days of testing at a circuit called Pembley and he broke the lap record there.

And consequently all the European teams heard about him breaking the lap record at Pembley and that led to the famous French team -- DAMS -- to invite him to drive test in Spain.

DAMS invited young Jefferies to drive test in Spain because of the snowy conditions that hit the United Kingdom during the months of December and January.

And on his first day at Cartagena, he was quickest of all the cars there, which included the Kauffman team.

What made it even more impressive was the fact that he'd never seen the track before.

"He is quick and consistent, two key ingredients in a quick driver.

"He is attentive to instructions and honest about his feedback, which makes it easy and rewarding to work with him," commented his engineer David Hache before adding that he enjoyed Jefferies' open and friendly attitude.

Having impressed the DAMS team, Jefferies then headed back to England where he spent a few days with the Motaworld Racing team.

Alf Boarer, Driver Development Manager for Motaworld Racing, was responsible for taking Giorgio Pantano from karting to Formula One and felt Jefferies was exceptional in terms of car control, speed and feedback.

"I'm 100 percent sure that if he can find the funding to progress his career he will be by far the best racing driver to come out of Southern Africa since Jody Scheckter.

"For someone so young he has a great presence of mind and the driving part comes easy to him.

"That's because he is complete natural with a very good driving brain and keeps himself in top physical shape. He's got a great future."

Having won two kart titles for the Castrol Toyota Motorsport Development Team, Jefferies first moved to single seaters for 2009.

With a US$50 000 Formula BMW scholarship to do the Formula BMW Pacific championship, he was the youngest driver in a series, but this only served to make his performances even more noteworthy.

It only took until the second race meeting of the season to notch up his first win.

He was then appointed as a Childline Zimbabwe Ambassador and with support from Air Zimbabwe and logistics giant Pioneer Corporation, he won two races in the year.

Altogether he was on the podium eight times and ended the season third in the overall championship and Formula BMW Junior champion.