Some overdue good news for British racing fans – the finale of the 2008/09 A1GP season has been confirmed for Brands Hatch.
Pete da Silva, A1GP’s CEO, has announced: “We are pleased to announce A1GP is returning to Brands Hatch for a fourth consecutive season.
“We have worked hard to put together an interesting calendar of challenging circuits and Brands Hatch will provide an exciting final venue.”
The news means that A1 Team Great Britain is set to return to the venue of two of its race wins as the last outing of the season is held at the Kent circuit on the weekend of May 1-3.
The series visits for the fourth year running and on the last two occasions Robbie Kerr, a front runner to be Team GBR’s pick as sole drive next season, has won the sprint race. (You can watch him doing it last year in the video embedded in this post.)
On the last two visits the team also claimed pole position and the runner-up spot in each of the feature races, in addition to Kerr’s successes. But it has not yet managed to win a championship, carving out the number three spot as its especial domain.
According to series organisers, Team GBR will be aiming to retain its record as holder of the most victories on home soil, as well as fighting for the championship title.
Katie Clements, team principal, said: “We are very happy that Brands Hatch will host the season final in May 2009. It is truly our home track and holds a lot of happy memories for us.
“This year we very much hope to be heading into our home race as the title favourites and will be aiming once again to take race victories there.â€
The team is due to test the car for the first time at Snetterton in Norfolk before embarking on the season opener at Zandvoort in the Netherlands in a month’s time.
In other testing news, the series had an outing at Donington Park today with cars nearly being washed off the track in torrential rain – but managed to stay positive regardless.
The A1GP test car, which has now completed more than 7,000km, joined some of the team cars on track with Italian GT driver Thomas Biagi at the wheel.
South Africa’s Adrian Zaugg, a leading A1GP driver, said: “I was quite impressed with the car, especially considering the conditions.
“There was so much grip with the car, especially under braking. The car cornered well in both slow and high speed corners. It is a really good car, and had really good grip for the wet conditions.
“It was quite difficult to compare the new car with the old car, because it was wet today. But the Michelin tyres were fantastic.
“Even on the racing line, which in the wet you can normally not find much grip, the tyres meant there was grip there.”
There will be a further day’s testing at Donington this week, then more testing at Snetterton later this month.
• Pencil the date October 13 into your diaries – it’s the prospective release of the A1GP 2007/08 season review. Hopefully they won’t need to put it back a month or two.
Only joking, chaps.