08/12/2005
NEWS STORY
A1 Team India is looking to continue its improving performance from the last race at The Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. The weekend of racing at Sepang was a good step forward for A1 Team India as the pace of the car improved significantly. For the first time since the beginning of the A1 Grand Prix season in September 2005 at Brands Hatch, A1 Team India was really close to the frontrunners in terms of pace, with the gap reducing to 3 or 4 tenths of a second. Compared to the beginning of the season when A1 Team India was 3 to 4 seconds off the front-running pace, the team has moved forward in leaps and bounds.
In Sepang, during the feature race, on sheer pace it was evident that A1 Team India had its first opportunity to score points with a finish as high up as possibly fifth place. It was an unfortunate incident that occurred which put A1 Team India out of the race, but that's racing!
The Dubai Autodrome looks to be an extremely technical track, with a lot of fast corners and a few hairpin turns, one of which has a significant banking. It will come down to the drivers braking techniques in the hairpin turns, and the handling of the car in the high speed sections of the track. The back straight is almost 1 kilometer long. It will require an immense amount of concentration from the drivers, as well an extremely good setup of the car, as there is a tremendous mix of high speed and slow speed corners. The compromise in the balance of the car so that it can handle the fast and the slow sections will play a crucial role in the overall performance over the weekend. The communication between the driver and the engineers will also be critical to a good handling car. This will allow the team to understand better how the car is handling in the different sections of the track, and therefore to setup the car to perform better.
As always, there will be three practice sessions of one hour each, two on Friday and one on Saturday. However, this weekend, there will also be two additional sessions of twenty minutes each. This has been organized especially for the teams to run in their second/spare cars, to perform system checks on those cars, and to ensure that all the thousands of complex components that make up a modern single-seater car such as the A1 Grand Prix car, are performing as per their specifications. This additional time should also help the drivers to familiarize themselves with the track, and to create a better setup for the races on Sunday.
A1 Team India has designated Armaan Ebrahim as its driver for the weekend. His performances have been steadily improving from race to race, and there has been some very positive feedback from all quarters on the teenage sensations abilities behind the wheel. The organizers, A1 Grand Prix have also for the first time, mounted on-board cameras on A1 Team India's car, after the excellent performance and the amount of interest generated after the last race in Sepang.
A1 Team India seems to have earned its wings amongst the international presence at each of the A1 Grand Prix events, with other teams and drivers taking notice of its continuous improvement in performance. The team is now looking forward to some top ten race finishes which should open our account in terms of championship points, despite the pre-season plans of finishes between 15th and 20th place for the first half of the season.