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Posts: 6
Join Date: Jul 2008
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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 4th. 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 5th 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 4th by this time, comfortably ahead of the battle for 5th-6th-7th 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 8th 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.
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