Full speed ahead
Known as the ‘World Cup of Motorsport’, A1GP began in 2005 / ’6 with a racecar based on a Lola B05/52 chassis, powered by a 3.4-litre Zytek V8, and clad in a stylised bodywork and aerodynamics package that led to it being dubbed, not altogether unkindly, ‘the Batmobile’.
It produced ferocious racing and partisan crowds wherever it travelled, which, in turn, attracted future F1, WEC and DTM drivers and engineers to the international one-make series. By the 2007 / ’8 season, it regularly delivered what F1 was lacking at the time – overtaking and spectacle.
After three seasons of events, in which nations rather than teams and drivers competed against each other, and with what later transpired to be somewhat curious finances bubbling beneath the surface, a decision was made to build a brand new car. The reason for this sudden shift was led by an offer from a new engine supplier. Coming off the back of the dominant Schumacher era in F1, and with a recently crowned champion in Raikkonen, nobody hid the fact this was largely a marketing exercise. The caché of Ferrari involvement brought undoubted value to the series and helped to promote Ferrari’s road car division. However, even that brand value wasn’t enough as the category lasted for just one further season (2008 / ’9) before it went into liquidation.
The reasons for the collapse are outside our remit here, but the story of the genesis of the second generation A1GP car is fascinating. It is not simply another archetypal tale of how motorsport engineered a top-quality product in a very short timeframe. It’s the story of how an idea became a grid full of cars to F1 quality of the day in a matter of months, starting from scratch with no factory and no personnel.
Former technical director and chief designer on the project, John Travis,.
