Diary of A1GP …..

The third stop on the ten-round A1GP world tour was Malaysia, or more specifically, Sepang International Circuit, for the fourth season in a row. Seasons 1-3, with the old car, provided action, thrills and spills. So, would the new Powered by Ferrari cars do so as well?

That was the question on my mind as I awoke at 5:30am on Sunday morning to watch the racing, after two days of practice and qualifying building up to race day. After France and Great Britain looked very quick on Friday, topping the timesheets between them in all 3 sessions, qualifying took on a very different look. A1GP have implemented a new rule, supposedly to make the races more exciting (although I think it’s a fake way of generating excitement which is not needed), whereby each team can use powerboost for 1 full lap in qualifying, out of the 4 flying laps. Mexico proved how quick it could be in the morning, when David Garza rose from lower midfield obscurity to the top of the timesheets after testing the system out with new tyres.

When qualy came around, the grid for the sprint race saw Neel Jani, the “Sepangmeister”, take pole (with boost) ahead of Duval and Bamber (also using boost). Italy and Mexico used their boost to take top-10 grid positions. As for feature qualifying, Carroll and Watts were 1-2 on the grid, with Daniel Morad using his boost to perfection to take 3^rd. Duval, Bamber and Jani were way down (9^th, 15^th and 16^th).

The start of the sprint race was crazy, Marco Andretti unable to avoid Karthikeyan at the rolling start and smashing into the back of the Indian machine. Then Felipe Guimaraes (a personal favourite of mine) hit Andretti, with both the USA and Brazil cars airborne for a second or two. And “Big Phil” summed it up quite well when he described his weekend as “shit”.

On the restart, Watts couldn’t get away, an ECU failure robbing him of likely points for GBR (boo!). It was a simple win for the Swiss, while New Zealand forcefully passed France in the pits but was forced to give the place back (although I thought it was a little harsh). Further behind, good old Zauggi continued the tradition of Red Bull drivers causing havoc at Sepang by clobbering Fairuz Fauzy but, for reasons unknown, wasn’t penalised despite the Hammer being penalised for the same thing a year ago. Malaysia had to limp back to the pits with a puncture which was bad for fans of the yellow car.

The feature race began with a bang, Carroll getting away perfectly from pole and Morad following him, Watts having had a very poor start. Behind, the Swiss car spun and stalled mid-way around the first lap, while the Netherlands and India were involved in a seemingly innocuous collision. However, the Dutch car was forced to serve a puzzling drive through penalty.

Filipe Albuquerque passed Morad on the first lap and, a few laps in, both Morad and Watts ran wide while battling. As he rejoined, Watts became sandwiched between Guimaraes and Duval, and couldn’t avoid hitting the back of Duval’s car, breaking his front wing and puncturing Duval’s tyre. Both Watts and Duval rejoined but, unfortunately, Watts had to retire later on with more tech problems. No points for GBR, despite looking very quick – a complete contrast to the excellent Chengdu weekend.

What else happened in the race? Well, Carroll put in an absolutely dominant drive, beating Albuquerque by 15+ seconds. Young Marco managed to take the USA car onto the podium in 3^rd, and looked exhausted afterwards, while Australia took an excellent 4^th thanks to the “Pit-Stop Kings” putting in two excellent stops. Zaugg was 5^th, followed by Bamber and Big Phil G. Bleekemolen finished 8^th after the drive through, China were 9^th with Tung and Fauzy finished 10^th, although he could have been on the podium. While running 3^rd earlier on, he entered the pits after hearing a command to pit on his radio. Turns out it was another team’s radio frequency, and when he came in to pit, he was sent on his way again. He passed Piscopo with a brainy move to get into the points, and 10^th was a good return after an extra pit-stop, although the locals would have loved the yellow car in the top 3.

So, overall, another exciting race weekend from the A1 boys, with overtaking clearly possible in the new Ferrari-powered machine and position changes going on throughout the field (except at the front, where Jani and Carroll dominated). The only bad thing?

We have to wait 9 weeks until the next race…

 By KMJ

So… after an exciting season opener in Zandvoort, where 6 A1 teams missed out on the action, the A1 circus rolled into Chengdu, China five weeks later for round 2 of the season. 3 nations were still missing – Pakistan’s Adam Khan cannot fit into the car due to his height, Germany are undergoing a “management restructure” - meaning Willi Weber is off the scene – and Canada were nowhere to be seen. But the grid certainly looked a lot healthier with Great Britain (yay!), India and Mexico all there, and all nations seemingly running their proper liveries rather than the half-finished ones many cars sported at Zandvoort.

After a day of practice on Friday, where the team spirit in the paddock was clearly seen when Switzerland let Mexico’s David Garza practice in their car while the Mexican one was still being built, qualifying rolled around on Saturday. After a close-run Q1 session, Edoardo Piscopo beached his car in the gravel… and unfortunately the marshals took so long to move it that Q2 was called off. So Adam Carroll of Ireland took pole for the sprint race, ahead of Robert Doornbos of the Netherlands and GBR’s Danny Watts (yay!).

Feature qualifying was awesome from a British perspective, with Watts taking pole with a scintillating lap, ahead of Carroll and Filipe Albuquerque of Portugal.

The sprint race was one of those very boring sprints that have often been thrown up in A1 history – Zandvoort or Eastern Creek S3 sprints it wasn’t. Carroll won from Doornbos, with Watts holding off Jani for 4^th. At this point, after seeing the first race in the dry with the new A1 car, I was worried that the car was too aero efficient for any overtaking to take place. How wrong I was…

The feature race began with Watts, Carroll and Albuquerque getting off the line well, followed by Switzerland’s Neel Jani and Monaco’s Clivio Piccione. Albuquerque passed Carroll and Piccione passed Jani, shaking up the order, but after the first few it settled into a pretty stagnant race. That was until the first round of pit-stops, when Portugal took the lead from Britain after a great stop, and Australia, the pit-stop kings, helped John Martin up to 5^th with an amazing stop. Going the other way was Monaco, who dropped a couple of places after a poor stop.

Portugal pulled away from GBR in the middle part of the race, with Ireland lurking close behind.

The second round of stops saw Ireland vault ahead of GBR into second, and Portugal retain the lead. GBR would then drop back from the top two for the rest of the race but take a solid podium finish. Switzerland were 4^th by this time, comfortably ahead of the battle for 5^th-6^th-7^th between Martin, Fairuz Fauzy of Malaysia and France’s Nicolas Prost. Then the fun started.

Fauzy used the rocket-like power boost to pass Australia around the outside of turn 1 after being alongside on the start-finish straight. Prost tried the same move not long afterwards but spun into retirement.

This caused a safety car, which bunched up the front runners with a few laps to go. On the restart, Carroll pressured Albuquerque but the Portuguese kept cool under pressure and held him off. Carroll tried time and time again to get past, even getting alongside the Portuguese car at turn 1, but he couldn’t pass him, and Portugal crossed the line to become the 17th nation to win in A1GP.

So after a mediocre sprint, the feature delivered the close racing, thrills and spills that we want to see from A1, and was a very entertaining race.

From my perspective, it was also a great weekend as GBR started their season in style with 2 podium finishes, and are 8^th in the championship despite missing a round.

Next we go to Sepang, a track with long, wide straights which always provides excitement. I can’t wait.

KMJ

The season opener was already 5 weeks ago, but it feels to me as if the season really begins on this weekend. It will be the first time the normal weekend procedure (with rookie practice, segmented qualifying and sprint race with mandatory pitstop) will be used in the era of the A1GP Ferrari and it will also be the first time we’ll have 20 nations on track in this season.

I’m extremly curious about seeing the Chengdu International Circuit because I find it hard to imagine how the racing will be there. I hope it will be dry during the complete weekend as I finally want to see the new cars racing against each other with maximum speed.

In my opinion it also will be very interesting to see how well former Formula 1 racer Robert Doornbos and Indy Car star Marco Andretti will perform. I hope they won’t have a walk-over though to prove (once more) that A1GP has a high level of racing.

At the end I want to say that I’m happy Zahir Ali finally gets his chance in the Indonesian car. Last year’s almost Formula BMW Asia champion deserved this for a longer time, but unfortunately he wasn’t able to do last season’s Snetterton test due to visa problems (at least that was the official version).

See you,
Lutz

What do I think of Chengdu and A1GP’s decision to visit the circuit for China’s round of the 2008-09 A1GP Season, ‘Powered by Ferrari’

Well, to be honest, I do not know!

No major series has ever visited the circuit to in that respect it is a complete unknown.

Will it help A1GP. YES. It will. Going to an area devasted by the Eathquake earlier in the year and donating money to the area through the tourism and infrastracture around the circuit can only be good PR for A1 when they too need it.

On the other hand it may not be such a good idea purely for the reason that Chengdu Circuit is known by barely anyone outside of China/Asia.

Circuit wise, A1GP and Chengdu circuit management have upgraded the circuit substanially to be able to host an event of A1’s calibre at Chengu, and they have succeeded.

But overall, is it a good move to take A1 to Chengdu?

Only time will tell, but I hope so for everyones sake.

ROLL ON CHENGDU!

Here it is, my first weblog entry. Yes, I finally wrote it, “thanks” to some pressure which was put on me by the gr8est - it’s really an unthankful task to write something about A1GP if nothing scandalous has happened and the next race weekend still is 3 (!!!) weeks away…

On this weekend there is (amongst other race meetings) the fourth round of the new established Superleague Formula - and I simply can’t do otherwise but always compare it to A1GP when I watch the first. Yes, the fact that I’m not exactly a supporter of the idea to let football clubs race against each other hasn’t stopped me from watching it. Well, Tony Teixeira affirms there isn’t a rivalry between the two series - because the beautiful game one “isn’t globally oriented” (the question is: for how long???) - but the similarities (not the drivers count but the teams, boost button, 2 races on Sunday with a totalized racing time of around 90 minutes, a rookie session - has this finally implemented in SF now or not!?) speak a different language…

First I have to say the Superleague Formula has really nice cars - and before the season started I had the fear that the good look and especially the V12 engines of the SF cars could cause that undetermined people would prefer SF over A1GP - but after Zandvoort I have to say that this was unfounded because the new Ferrari cars are great “beasts”, too.

A big problem of Superleague Formula so far is - in my opinion - the rare overtaking. I could hardly see any during the first three race weekends! (OK, the new A1GP car has still to prove its potential in this case on a dry track…) But this is probably only an illusion and caused by an even bigger problem of the series: the bad TV broadcast. 

I’m sorry but the broadcast partly was a catastrophe. Obviously good battles (which you could divine in the background) weren’t shown full-screen and even the replays of them often weren’t on air. Furthermore the mandatory pitstops of the leaders weren’t shown, so you didn’t have an idea of what was going on there. Besides they don’t have a graphic which tells you when someone pushes the boost button. If you don’t know that these are there, you won’t learn it during the races. I really have to praise A1GP’s TV broadcast at this point: They regularly show us the good battles, even if they are in the midfield or between the backmarkers, and don’t miss the pitstops, so you can realize when Team France is getting an advantage over Team Malaysia and so on. Aside from that A1GP has one of the most highly respected pair of commentators in its world feed: Ben Edwards and John Watson (I simply love him! *lol*). In contrast to that Superleague Formula has used 3 different compositions of commentators on 3 race weekends!

The question in this case is: In which degree are the series’ organizers accountable for that? Let’s talk about a thing they are responsible for then: The safety car appearances. In my opinion they deploy the safety car too often. OK, I have to admit that it was similar with A1GP at the beginning, but this has improved a lot. But the fact itself that it is often deployed is not thaaat bad. Worse is when the safety car misses the leading car. When it happens, the safety car has to bunch up the chasing field, then has to wait until the leading car approaches from behind, has to let all the cars through until the leader is directly behind it and finally wait again until the rest of the field has done a lap and is in the queue once more. This procedure costs much time and - of course - racing action. At Zolder alone this happened twice (with 3 safety car periods in total).

But there also are things the Superleague has over A1GP. In Germany at least it is broadcasted on Eurosport 2. If it will be aired on Eurosport 1 in future it would have a big advantage over A1GP as the World Cup of Motorsports hasn’t managed to secure a deal with a German free TV station in 3 years. Aside from that the Superleague has teams from Belgium, Spain, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates - nations which, oddly enough, have never reached A1GP so far.

Nevertheless Superleague Formula isn’t a real “threat” for A1GP in case of excitement at the moment in my opinion - whereas you have to confess that the series is still new and has only done a half season aka 3 race weekends so far.

See you,

Lutz

P.S.: I can’t wait for the Chengdu race weekend as I finally want to see (hopefully) 23 A1GP Ferraris racing against each other - that would be 5 more cars than the Superleague has.

At the moment, the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez is going through a very difficult situation. FIA vetoed the Peraltada because it is supposedly  very dangerous because it does not have a free spaceif a car doesn´t take it  correctly.

Actually, the Peraltada has not been a problem during the time that has been used, thankfully no accidents have occurred in that area. Even precautions have been taken to ensure that accidents do not occur. It has been used a chicane in the Champ Car events. The A1 has run without chicane and there was no major problem.

The FIA will not fail to categories such as the A1 running on this circuit unless it is improved Peraltada. I do not think that vetoing the race only by the Peralta is the right thing, you could use the area of the stadium in order to pass and not take the Peraltada at high speed.

This type of curve you get a hint of action to careers, but at the FIA cares more safety for pilots and do not realize that removing such segments takes excitement to the race. I understand that the important thing is safety but the show  is also very important.

If the FIA decides to continue with the veto to the Hermanos Rodriguez several international careers as the A1 will be affected and will be a great loss both for the series to the public as well as a few international serials run on this track next year.

In truth it is a pity that good circuits like this one have to go through this kind of situation. This should not happen because the car is severely affected.

We must do something to save this circuit and others who are going through the same situation.

Save the Peraltada
Save the Autódromo  Hermanos Rodriguez

Virgie

With the recent news that Mexico are about to loose their greatest circuit due to FIA stupidity - yes I said stupidity, and I stand by it - we are faced with this question… What will be left of the great world circuits?

First we had the Nurburgring, yes it was very dangerous and way to lond, but the new version has no character to it. It is dull, bland a disgrace to the heritage of the classic version.

Then there was Hockenheim, another classic circuit fast straights tight chicanes. Now its just a bog standard Herman Tilke circuit.

Thats just two examples. There are many, many more, Spa, Imola, Macau, Monza, to name but a few.

And to make it worse its not necisarrily the circuits being wasted or going into disrepair but bends on these classic circuits.

Take the lastest scenario, Mexico City and the infamous final turn ‘Peraltada’ a 180 degree banked final turn with a concrete wall on the outside. The FIA have refused to sanction the circuit for motor racing due to the bend being too dangerous and instead want 2 chicanes installed.

This is silly, If this is the case then they should never be racing at Monaco, Singapore, Valencia Macau full stop! concrete and barriers by the circuit all around. OK granted they have dumbed them down a little but still!

And guess what? A1GP fall foul of this….. First Durban with the new Powered by Ferrari cars being too powerful for the streets and now Mexico City.

Season 2 - the first visit to the circuit saw the full Peraltada used without any chicane and cars going round the bend at full speed. Season 3 - a tempoary chichane is added before the entry to the bend to slow the cars before entering the Peraltada. But at least they were still able to go through the whole bend without slowing again.

But NOW is just plain silly a chicane on the exit too. (bare in mind both chicanes but be permanent now) To me this is more dangerous. Having a chicane built on the EXIT of a bend is pure stupidity. A car is going though the bend approaching the chicane at racing speeds. How is this driver supposed to see if a slower vehicle or a major incident has happened ahead? They can’t!

It is crazy great circuits and bends are being destroyed on the basis of safety. Drivers dont sign a waiver saying ‘Motorsport is dangerous’ and ‘You except the full consequences of any incidents that may or may not happen’ for no reason. On this basis the drivers know that there is a risk and should be prepared for it, they dont expect the challenges dumbed down to a level that kids are expected to go Go-Karting with.

I urge EVERYONE to write to the FIA to complain about their obvious stupidity. Yes safety is of an utmost importance but not everything in live can be 100% safe and Motor racing is most certainly NOT and never will be! Leave the classic circuits and curves and concentrate on safety of the cars.

A1GP, as Pete da Silva admits, has a cashflow problem. I am pretty sure they have. After season 3, they basically had to start all over again because of Ferrari’s involvement. Since pretty much nothing of the old car was retained, it also means that everything had to be purchased anew.

Let’s take a look at the economics involved: perhaps we will get some idea as to where the problems lie.

Costs:

Overhead:

Everyone involved in A1GP does so for a reason. While a lot of people would love to work there for free, all staff of A1GP is being payed. From CEO to receptionist, people do want to get payed for the work they do, and I don’t blame them. Overhead also counts for office running costs. Power in the office, all paper and toner used, all phonecalls all count as overhead.

Transport:

I have come to understand that A1GP pays for the transport of all the cars and part of the equipment, aswell as transport and stay of all A1GP staff. Also included is the cost of warehousing the cars and equipment when they are not used.

Purchase:

The cars are purchased by A1GP. Simple as that. Also included is a reasonable amount of spare parts and normal maintnance costs. If a certain part has a certain lifetime, then replacement would fall under A1’s costs when it breaks down (I think). If, for some reason, a teammember is responsible, then the cost for new parts is with the team. (Driver getting off the track, for instance.)

Research:

I am sure that at one time, money will be set aside for research aswell. It is needed to grow and prosper. One should also count marketing and reconnaissance trips under research. Trips to talk to prospecting franchises, circuits, merchandisers and sponsors.

And then there is the other side of the balance: Income.

Franchises:

Some of the money A1GP gets is from selling franchises. They are not cheap, and that is perhaps why some teams left the series, but it is used, mostly, for the purchase of the car.

Entry money:

Each team has to pay an annual entry fee. This money is used, mainly, to organise the races with, and pay the prizemoney.  Entry money also comes from some of the paying circuits (I still do not believe all circuits are paying to hold an A1GP weekend).

Advertising and sponsorships:

While A1GP does not have that many sponsors and/ or advertisors yet, they do have some. Some simply will offer services with a reduced fee, like Michelin or D.O.T., while others pay to be in the spotlight. Interestingly, some refuse to be known. While it is no secret that Dallara is building the new chassis, for instance, A1GP and Dallara are silent about it.

Revenue:

This is the income generated by ticket sales and hospitality. This will roughly generate 5 million euro every race weekend, so it’s surprising not more races are on the calendar.

Television and other media rights:

One of the biggest fish in the income lake is the television rights. Yes, we all feel that A1GP could have made some other, and perhaps even wiser choices for what is still a fledgeling series, but income is needed, and this is one of the things providing income. On the other side, I am yet to see an official A1GP magazine in print, or a nice official A1GP calendar. That brings me to the next category:.

Merchandise and licencing:

Now here is a part that seriously needs improving. At the start of the new season, only team Netherland’s merchandise was there, and it only consisted of clothing. No stuffed animals, no books, no other media, no model cars, no pens, no mugs, no pretty much everything except a way too expensive watch, no matter how nice.

So that is basically how I think the economics behind the series work. Now how would I make them work for me? By getting merchandise out as soon as possible. I would probably take some lesser bids for better effect. For comparison, I’d accept a lesser bid from Minichamps for the 1/43 scale model over the better bid from Amalgam on the basis that Minichamps has the better distribution. I would probably do the same with television rights. Take a decent bid from a free-to-air television station rather than a big bid from a satellite one.

And, I would make sure A1GP is visible on all the major auto salons all over the world. Paris, where they have been for the first time this year, is just the first step. Detroit, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, Geneva and Tokyo would follow.

Richard

Often we feel very excited when we read rain in the weather forecast ahead of a race or even the whole raceweekend. Because to us race fans it means exciting races, lots of crashes, spectacular manouvers ect. I think you get the picture. But I´ve come to realize the difference between rain race and rain race. I can tell you I do love when it rains when I´m watching racing on tv. I can stay in my bed or enjoy it from my sofá or where I like to sit and just relax. It means I can enjoy it in a different way to the poor people being stuck in the grandstands, who have payed lots of money to acctually come home sulking wet to their hotel, home or whatever.

This acctually happened to me last weekend been at the season opener at Zandvoort in Holland. I mean going there I knew weather would suck, and I packed my things and in my opinion both waterproof and warm. Did it help?? Answer is no, not at all. When I arrived on Thursday it was cloudy and windy, plane was even delayed due to bad weather conditions in Amsterdam but I thought ok I can handle this. There also was short periods of rain and I thought well last time I went to Zandvoort for DTM it rained a bit for like 15 minutes when F3 euroseries were racing on track, so thought ok I can handle some rain. From the moment I thought that it got worse and worse every day and I think it reached the climax on Sunday when Feature race was about to start. Not to mention it was a storm that night and I acctually thought World War three had started, yes it was that bad! I´m not joking! So why not take the Sunday as it happened?

Someone woke me up at 6.30 am telling me: “we will soon go to the track”. And I was like: “Hello it´s World War three going on out there and the Sprint race starts 11 am!!” and I was very tired due to the partying, drinking bit too much beer the evening before and sleeping badly because of the storm and it was very cold. But as I perfered not to walk there I got my ass out the sleeping-bag and in my clothes, mind you this has never happened so fast all my life!! Haha. So with all my clothes on I really thought I could outlive this storm all day and I didn´t feel anything at first. We arrived at the track around 8 am, parked ourselves on the dunes at the Tarzan-corner (T1). Everything ok so far, yay perhaps it will only be cloudy and windy (see I was thinking positive thoughts) but no from the moment Sprint race started hell broke loose. Which meant it rained more and more and was freezing cold thanks to the wind. I seriously thought I would freeze to death at the dunes!! I mean I was too cold to move, I was sulking wet and couldn´t feel my feet! If I could I would have asked some of the dutch ppl there to dig me a hole haha. So what about the racing, Yes it was still brilliant but the whole experience wasn´t really what I had in mind. But still it was unforgetable!

So what do I want to say with this? Nothing really more than watching racing live in the rain is a different story than watching it at home infront of the tv. The action is obviously the same but if you enjoy having a cold go to Holland in October and watch the race in the rain! Haha.. I had a great time despite the horrible weather and no doubt I´m going back even tho it will rain. I will be more prepared! Swimsuit perhaps??

So will end this by saying big thanks again to “the Gang” at Zandvoort (if you will ever read this), thanks for giving me one of the best experiences in my life!

Cheers Em

What did I expect heading in to Zandvoort? To be honest, I had no idea what would happen. Brand new cars, some of them having not even run yet, and heavy rain forecast. I was both nervous and excited at the same time. As I begun to watch the Circuit Park Zandvoort racecam on Saturday morning, that nervousness turned into joy. The new cars looked awesome, and were putting in superb laptimes. I was still a bit worried about the teams who hadn’t left the garages yet though…

Eventually throughout Saturday, all cars except Brazil and China made an appearance out on track, and the Netherlands put in a blistering lap time to take pole. I was hoping for an Adam Carroll pole, but I thought 3^rd on the grid wasn’t too bad. How wrong I was…

Come Sunday morning, I slept in and missed the extra practice session where Brazil and China ran (doh!) but I was happy to know we would have a 17-car grid for the sprint race. I expected a race where the Netherlands would simply drive away from the field. 

But at the start of the sprint, Earl Bamber made an excellent start and was right on Bleekemolen’s tail throughout the first few laps. Behind, Adam Carroll, aggressive driver that he is, put on waaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much power through Arie Luyendijk Bocht, spun, and was hit by an unfortunate Clivio Piccione in the Monaco car. 

In the wet, I thought Black Beauty looked a lot quicker than the Dutch car, and I was right – eventually Bleekemolen was forced into an error, Bamber went past and drove away. Bleekemolen then slipped backwards, passed also by Malaysia’s Fairuz Fauzy and France’s Loic Duval, putting in a super drive after only having driven the car for the first time on Saturday afternoon! 

18-year-old Bamber didn’t hold onto that lead for long though, as the yellow and black machine of Fauzy put in a hard but fair pass to take the lead, to the delight of the A1 Team Malaysia mechanics! From there, Fauzy, Bamber and Duval held onto their places to the end in vile conditions. It was a shame that, after a scintillating drive from the back of the grid, Ho-Pin Tung spun out of 6^th place and hit the pit-wall, bringing out the red flag. Big Phil G (or Felipe Guimaraes, whichever you prefer ) also crashed on that lap, as it was like driving in a river by then! 

The feature promised to be a cracker, with the track getting wetter and wetter as the rain came down. It started behind the safety car, as the sprint had, and when the safety car came in the cars begun to spread out, as visibility was almost nil due to severe amounts of spray. USA’s Charlie Kimball spun early on, but re-joined, and a lap later Duval passed Bamber to put France up into 2^nd! A lap later it was the orange Dutch car also passing Black Beauty, sending the very wet crowd into a frenzy as he moved up to 3^rd! 

Ho-Pin Tung’s chances of another charge through the field were ended when he spun into the gravel and re-joined, only to be hit with a drive-through for overtaking under yellows, and soon after the emerald green Irish car spun into the gravel and into retirement. Not a good weekend for Adam Carroll and the team – 0 points when some of their championship rivals were not present. 

Heartbreak followed for World Cup champions Switzerland when they had to retire with gearbox problems, and Neel Jani was then accosted by the new female interviewer – poor Neel! 

Italy and South Africa then collided, and both went out of the race. I initially assumed it was Zaugg’s fault – he is a bit of a hothead – but it turned out to be Onidi’s. Sorry Zauggi!  

Then it was pit-stop time – both the Malaysian and Dutch teams struggled with wheel nuts, whereas the French team had a good stop which allowed Duval to take the lead! For the Netherlands, though, that wasn’t the end of the drama – Bleekemolen returned to the pits a few laps later, gesticulating like a madman about something, but was sent out again. An interview with Jan Lammers revealed that there was a steering wheel problem, which could pop up later in the race… 

Next we had heavy crashes for Indonesia and Portugal, and a spin for Korea, bringing out the safety car, and when it came back in Lebanon, who had never scored an A1 point before, were an amazing 4^th! 

It didn’t last long – Daniel Morad’s aggression getting the better of him as he spun, gifting the position to Australia. But the pit window then opened for a 2^nd time, and Lebanon managed to get ahead of Australia after a slow stop from the Aussie crew! France, Malaysia and New Zealand, 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd at this stage, all maintained their positions after their pitstops, and I didn’t think anything else eventful was going to happen.

But first Charlie Kimball spun into the gravel and out, a lap or two after setting a fastest lap that wasn’t beaten, and then we had a huge crash when Daniel Morad spun on the start finish straight and hit the lapped Chinese car of Ho-Pin Tung – both cars skidded into the Tarzan gravel trap and the Lebanese car hit the tyre barrier hard. Both drivers were OK, luckily, but the safety car was brought out.

The race ended under the safety car, as the time was up, and we were all left to reflect on a truly thrilling race where Lebanon scored their first ever A1GP points, classified 8^th despite crashing out, and newcomers Monaco (6^th) and Korea (7^th) also scored points. Bleekemolen in the Dutch car finished 5^th in the end, with that gearbox problem recurring and making the car hard to drive.  

Overall, despite a reduced grid, the opening round of season 4 had everything we have come to expect from A1GP – drama, unpredictability and tension. And I loved every minute of it. 

Here’s hoping for a full grid of cars in Chengdu next month, where “my team”, Great Britain, enter the championship picture. I hope.

KMJ

PS: Feel free to comment on my views