21/02/2008
NEWS STORY
This weekend A1 Team France will be competing in the seventh round of the World Cup of Motorsport on the Durban circuit in South Africa. It will have no fewer than 3 talented and experienced drivers at its disposal!
Nicolas Prost will drive the car tomorrow morning in the 2 practice sessions for rookies. He will then be replaced by Jonathan Cochet who will do the last fettling-in tests on Friday. Tomorrow evening, Loïc Duval (right), who will be attending the 2008 launch of the team with whom he will be racing in the Formula Nippon Championship this season, will jump on a plane bound for Durban. He will land on Saturday morning and will go straight to the circuit to drive the A1 Team France car for the rest of the weekend.
Once again there should be a lot of on-track action. Thanks to 6 podium placings including a victory and 11 points-scoring finishes in 12 starts, A1 Team France is in second place overall with the same number of points as New Zealand. It's the first time this has ever happened in the history of A1GP. Loïc Duval and the team have but a single aim in mind: to take the lead!
The Durban layout is the only city circuit on the calendar, and it's impossible to race there outside the A1GP weekend. So the drivers' experience of it is very limited and each second of practice will count. It measures 3,280 kms and has 11 corners including a tight right- handed hairpin at the end of the main straight. The guardrail is never more than a few centimetres away, so the slightest driver error could have serious consequences for the final result.
Olivier Panis, sporting director: "We've arrived in Durban with our motivation boosted ten- fold as we could take the lead in the championship this weekend. To achieve this we can count on three very determined drivers. I'd like to thank the Nakajima Racing team for releasing Loïc to race for us this weekend. Also a big thanks to the organisers who are allowing him to drive from Saturday onwards. Our aim is to make no mistakes on this very tricky circuit, to maximise our running time and to progress step by step. We're chasing podium finishes and victories this weekend."