The New Zealand team in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport is targeting this weekend's 9th round in Mexico as crucial to its hopes of gaining on championship leader Germany.

The third-to-last event of the season will be run over the 4.46km Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City and second-placed Black Beauty is aiming to eat into the 30-point lead Germany has in the series.

A1 Team.NZL is keen to capitalise on the absence of teenage wunderkid Nico Hülkenberg, missing due to prior Euro F3 commitments, and put the pressure on Germany's 17-year-old rookie driver Christian Vietoris.

Jonny Reid, back in the driver's seat after Matt Halliday's fine effort in scoring two 3rd placings at the Durban round three weekends ago, says Hülkenberg's absence is a two-edged sword.

"He's done all the driving this season, so there's been minimal time for Christian in the car," Reid said. "But as a Rookie Driver he has the opportunity to run in two more practice sessions this weekend and get to grips with the track a lot quicker.

"Regardless of how well he goes, we won't be giving up. The points margin is more than we'd like, but if we keep our heads down, stay focused and keep striving for race wins hopefully we can close the gap."

Only one of the A1GP drivers has ever raced at the former F1 circuit, but Reid is pleased to hear that it is "fast and flowing" and he will walk the track tomorrow with chief engineer Chris Gorne to make notes and determine strategy.

"Essentially, my approach hasn't changed. It's all about winning races. If we get caught up in concentrating on Germany we could risk France and Great Britain closing in on us."

Reid says the whole championship has been a "huge positive" for New Zealand, but he won't be reflecting on the success of the campaign until after the final race at Brand's Hatch in a month's time.

His schedule after A1GP may be clearer by then. He recently spent 11 days in Japan testing the speedy Formula Nippon cars and is quite keen to have further talks about a potential drive in the highly-regarded series.

"They're very grunty cars," he said. "We hit a top speed of 310 kilometres per hour at Fuji Speedway and I enjoyed the experience. Even if nothing comes out of the testing, it was good to have a decent blowout in-between my A1GP drives."