A1 Team Ireland's on-track preparations for its third season in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport commence today with Portadown's Adam Carroll undertaking a rookie evaluation at Snetterton Circuit in Norfolk, England. The evaluation is planned to last two days, Team Ireland having used the 1.952 mile/3.123 kms circuit to evaluate rookie drivers in previous years. Carroll, 24, currently competes in GP2 for FMS International and has recently starred by winning the Sprint Race at the British Grand Prix in Silverstone, and the Feature Race at the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.

The Team Ireland car will conduct its rookie test in plain black livery as the team prepares to announce its sponsorship line-up and a revised colour scheme for the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport which commences at Zandvoort Park, Netherlands, on September 30th.

Official testing for Team Ireland will commence at Silverstone on August 28th/29th when all the teams competing in The World Cup of Motorsport will gather together for the first time since the season two finale at Brands Hatch in May.

"This week's rookie evaluation is the beginning of our on-track work for season three," said Team Owner Mark Kershaw, "and we invited Adam Carroll to take part in order to help us examine possibilities in the future. One of the great things about A1GP is that teams can evaluate and nominate a squad of drivers. We are also talking to former drivers who have performed well for us and other rookies who are interested in racing for Ireland's national team, but it's early days yet – the first Silverstone test in a couple of weeks time will be more meaningful when we actually test against other teams, but we won't be rushing into any decisions."