09/12/2005
NEWS STORY
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Katherine Legge made history today by becoming the first female A1 driver in the A1 Team Great Britain car. Katherine's two 20 minute sessions were taken up with running in a new engine and bedding in new brakes so it wasn't a case of sheer speed – but an intelligent drive to get the best from a new engine and her valuable feedback on the handling of the car.
"This has been a fantastic experience," said Legge, "and I'm very grateful to John Surtees for the opportunity. It's interesting to get to drive different single-seaters and the A1 car is obviously one of the top racing cars in the world. It was good to do my bit for the British team – I've really enjoyed working with them. The track here is awesome! Very challenging and very well designed. A1 is a great concept and now that I've been involved I can see how well it's doing. All in all I'm very happy to have been here."
"Katherine did absolutely everything that was asked of her," added John Surtees. "She didn't have an easy task coming to drive an unfamiliar car on a new circuit. Obviously the times were relatively slow to start with because of the sand on the track and by the time we'd gone through the routines for running a new engine and prepared sets of brake parts for the weekend there was little time left for Katherine to extend herself. What was most important was her excellent feedback about the characteristics of the car which fitted extremely well with the data. Any future drives will depend on opportunities arising and circumstances. Of course we have Alex Lloyd as part of our team too but when it comes to reviewing the situation for next year's programme she'll certainly be considered."