After a promising start to its A1 Grand Prix campaign at Brands Hatch, the SA team struggled at the EuroSpeedway and hopes to fare better at the former F1 circuit, Estoril, this weekend.
After a promising start to its A1 Grand Prix campaign at Brands Hatch, the SA team struggled at the EuroSpeedway and hopes to fare better at the former F1 circuit, Estoril, this weekend.
South Africa, with 21-year-old Stephen Simpson at the wheel, scored five points with a sixth place in the feature race at Brands Hatch in England, but Vulindlela, with IRL star Tomas Scheckter at the wheel, failed to score any points in Germany. Scheckter finished 12th in the sprint race, but was forced to retire from the main race.
Brazil, France and New Zealand have emerged as the frontrunners to date, certainly in terms of points scored, but others to watch are Great Britain, the United States and Germany.
Nations may enter a maximum of three drivers for each event with one nominated ahead of each practice session. Only one driver may be nominated for qualifying, but teams may nominate different drivers for the two races. According to a spokesman for A1 South Africa, Scheckter was expected to represent South Africa again in Portugal, with Simpson likely to be the alternate driver.
“We realise the public must be disappointed with our team’s performance at EuroSpeedway. We’re very disappointed too, but we learnt a lot and will closely examine all the performance variables in an effort to determine what the problem is when we get to Portugal and have access to our cars,” said Mike Carroll, sporting and technical manager of A1 Grand Prix Team South Africa.
“We’ll be able to run our second car for the first time this weekend and this will give us valuable comparative data. Rest assured, we will be doing our very best in Portugal this weekend to make all South Africans proud,” Carroll added.
Each event is held over three days – Friday through Sunday – and consists of three one-hour practice sessions, four 15-minute qualifying sessions with a 10-minute gap between each on Saturday, and a 15-minute warm-up session and two races (a 30-minute sprint and a 60-minute feature) on Sunday.
Teams may complete a single flying lap in each session with the best two times determining the team’s position on the starting grid for the flying start sprint race. The starting order for the feature race, which is from a standing start, is determined by the finishing order of the sprint race.
SABC will broadcast Saturday’s qualifying live from 2pm to 4pm and Sunday’s two races live from 1pm to 4.30pm.