The fourth season of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport gets underway at Zandvoort this weekend and South Africa will be hoping that 21-year-old Adrian Zaugg can start the season in exactly the same fashion as he has for the past two seasons – with a win in the Sprint race from pole position.

"Adrian's performance at Zandvoort in the past two seasons has been nothing short of stupendous. Last season there were qualifying sessions where he was more than a second faster than the entire chasing pack – an unbelievable achievement especially in such a high class field," said Mike Carroll, general manager of A1 Team South Africa. "ZA is sometimes used to represent our country and in Zaugg at Zandvoort it really has worked for us."

"Zandvoort has always been good to me and there shouldn't be any reason for this to change – I know the track really well," said Zaugg. "It is very early days with the new car and I am itching to see what happens at the first event as it will allow us to more clearly establish our goals for the coming season," continued the pilot who took South Africa to a fantastic top five championship position last season.

"Obviously we would like to again improve on our performance this season but the new car does throw an extra variable into the equation."

A1 Team South Africa will continue its technical alliance with A1 Team France and the Connor Racing organisation which looked after the two nations' cars last season. France finished fourth in the points.

"On the technical personnel side we have good continuity with the majority of the team being carried over. Notably Humphrey Corbett stays on as race engineer after a great job last season and having enjoyed a particularly good relationship with Adrian. Hagen Pischel comes into the team in the position of data engineer and should offer new insight in this area of the game," commented Carroll.

Unfortunately there will be no rookie driver session at Zandvoort due to the noise restrictions in the seaside resort. Incumbent rookie driver Wesleigh Orr looked a shoe-in for the role again this season until a late change of regulations by A1GP saw the rookie age limit deleted.

"From the inception of Formula Volkswagen we made it clear we would consider the top candidates from that category," said Carroll. "High downforce single seater experience is critical to us. We are very pleased that Wesleigh justified our faith in him by clearly dominating everyone of similar age, but with the removal of the age restriction, Wesleigh has suddenly found he needs to compete with the more experienced campaigners in the class, not only on the local circuits but also for the rookie seat.

"We decided rather than to take Wesleigh to Zandvoort where there would be no rookie session, to allow him to compete locally in the Formula Volkswagen races on the same weekend – this provides us with another window to assess the performance of the stand-out quartet of Gavin Cronje, Cristiano Morgado, Michael Stephen and Wesleigh," added Carroll.

Vulindlela (which means 'clear the way') has been newly liveried in the six colours of the South African flag and carries the prison number of Nelson Mandela, 46664, to promote the former president's foundation and its HIV/AIDS initiatives. It also carries the names of sponsors SABC Sport, Aon and Ericsson.

Circuit Park Zandvoort, located less than 30 km from Amsterdam and laid out in the sand dunes alongside the North Sea coast, is 4,1 km long and runs in a clockwise direction. There are 11 turns. It is regarded as a driver's circuit and features the famous Tarzan corner at the end of the main straight, offering one of the circuit's biggest challenges and an excellent overtaking opportunity.

All of the season's races will again be shown on television by A1 Team South Africa's broadcast partner SABC Sport.

Saturday's qualifying will be broadcast delayed on Sunday on SABC3 from 00h30 and Sunday's sprint and feature races will be broadcast from 14h00 to 16h30 (the recorded sprint race will be screened from 14h00 while the feature race will be live from 15h00).