29/08/2007
NEWS STORY
The official two-day test for the 22 teams contesting the third season of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport ended at Silverstone in England this afternoon with A1 Team Germany topping the time charts overall, followed by A1 Team Great Britain and A1 Team Switzerland. A1 Team South Africa was 4th overall.
After South Africa's Adrian Zaugg set the fastest time on Tuesday afternoon, a new best time for an A1GP car around Silverstone's national circuit layout of 1 min 10,484 sec, it was new signing Christian Vietoris who put the defending A1GP champions on top with a best lap of 1 min 10,005 sec during the Wednesday morning session.
Great Britain's Robbie Kerr was a quarter of a second slower, while Sebastian Buemi was third quickest in the A1 Team Switzerland car. All three set their times in the morning on new tyres, when conditions were at their best.
Zaugg, at the wheel of South Africa's Vulindlela, was second quickest in the afternoon session - in which times were compromised by an oil spill - behind Oliver Jarvis, who took over the driving duties of the A1 Team Great Britain car. Jarvis' best time was 1 min 10,708 sec, while Zaugg was 6/1 000th of a second slower (1 min 10,714 sec) and A1 Team New Zealand (Jonny Reid) was third (1 min 10,777 sec),
"I'm delighted with the team's performance over the past two days," said Mike Carroll, general manager of A1 Team South Africa. "We were competitive throughout and made good progress with each test sessions. While it was more about getting the set-up of the car right and trying out a number of different options, we were thrilled to top the time charts yesterday and finish a close runner-up to Great Britain in this afternoon's final session."
Zaugg was full of praise for the team and his new engineer, Humphrey Corbett. "We worked very well together and I am confident we are going to achieve good results this season," he said. "We put in a lot of hard work over the past two days and we made good progress."
A1 Team South Africa's rookie driver, Wesleigh Orr, was also happy with his first official appearance in Vulindlela. "I really enjoyed the experience and feel I have made some significant steps in what was only my second opportunity to drive Vulindlela following the Snetterton rookie test," said Orr. I concentrated on improving my lap times and getting closer to Adrian's times."