True blue

An A1GP crash course before tomorrow's season opener.

A couple of years ago, when Michael Schumacher was dominating F1 and boring fans, an interesting series of motorcar racing was introduced to the world.

Called the World Cup of motorsport, the A1 GP was designed to add excitement to single-seater racing on a level playing field. Car development costs, sky high budgets and billion dollar sponsorships were all out of the window. This was motor racing at its unbiased best.

A1GP however failed to make the impact it was supposed to. On the telly, the cars looked a lot slower and teams with experienced drivers like the French, walked away with 13 out of a possible 22 races. The closest contender was Switzerland who were a full 50 points adrift. Team India was placed second to last. And fans turned back to F1.

The second season was a closer fought battle. Narain Karthikeyan was inducted into the series under Team India's new management with another prodigy, Parthiva Sureshwaran, as his co-driver.

India started their campaign mid-way through the season but managed to secure 16th, with a fourth place result as well. But the series as a whole was evolving, lap times were shrinking and different teams made it to the podium at every event.

Now with the 2007-08 season around the corner, a number of rule changes promises to add more wheel-banging excitement to both the Sprint and the Features race.

A new point scoring system "" 15 for the winner followed by 12, 10 and so on ensure that everyone till 10th place scores points. And one can also earn a point if he clocks the fastest lap of the race. Qualifying "" which was formerly held in four timed sessions of 15 minutes each, with the aggregate of the best times in any two sessions deciding a place on the grid for the Sprint race "" has changed.

Now the top times in any of the two sessions decide the team's Sprint race position while the other two session times will determine where a team starts the Features race.

This ensures everybody is racing with all guns blazing in both races. The final rule change is that all A1 teams must now make two mandatory pitstops. One in a window between lap 8 and 16 while the window for the second stop will only be revealed just before pit-lane opens on race day.

So what of Team India chances? Well, the experienced Karthikeyan is on a roll with lap records. And the fiery Parthiva is waiting in the wings to show the world what he's made of.

Karthikeyan's been the quickest driver at the final pre-season testing at Silverstone, getting ahead of Team NZ by three-tenths of a second. It may not be that much of an advantage, but enough for Karthikeyan to believe that he has a fair shot at this year's championship.

Experts believe that this season of A1 will be the closest ever, with drivers going over the edge to stay ahead. The flag drops tomorrow at Zandvoort in the Netherlands, so stock up on popcorn and cheer for that blue car every time it goes by.