A1 Team Switzerland Wins Nations’ Cup of Motorsport

May 04, 2008

After the sprint at Brands Hatch, everything was clear. Fourth place was enough for Switzerland to become the overall winners of the Nations’ Cup of Motorsport. Thus, the feature race in the afternoon was a show ride for Switzerland, in which Neel Jani finished on the podium for the eleventh time this season.

Switzerland claimed the world championship title with a margin of 41 points over New Zealand, an even more outstanding win than Germany against New Zealand last year (35) and almost as dominant as France against Switzerland in the 2005/2006 season (51). Winning the title is the biggest achievement in Swiss motor racing for a long time – comparable to the Grand Prix victories by Jo Siffert and Clay Regazzoni or the brilliant performance of the Sauber Mercedes-team in the sportscar world championship in the sixties, the seventies and the eighties of the past century.

“Our success is the result of the effort of all our 20 team members“, said a notably emotional Swiss team principal, Max Welti. “Our driver Neel Jani deserves a very special accolade as he made the best of the team work out there on the tracks in an almost perfect way. I dedicate our victory in the nations’ cup to the unforgotten Jo Siffert, who won his first Formula 1 race here at Brands Hatch 40 years ago and lost his life at the same venue in 1971”, the 56-year old from Zurich added, not hiding his emotions: “Having been able to represent our country as the patron of the Swiss national team fills me with joy and pride, and even more so as we have succeeded in claiming honour for Switzerland all over the world.”

Once again, Neel Jani did his job in a great way. “I did what I had to do”, the soon-to-be-25-year old from Berne said. “Especially at the start of the sprint, I couldn’t take any risks. For this reason, I let Ireland get through in the first corner without further ad and I concentrated on defending my fourth position. For the feature race, I had my eyes set on another podium finish. Achieving this was more or less easy, so that I can look back on a rather successful season.”

The Swiss record of the third season looks quite good. Apart from the title, with which the team earns one million dollars, Neel Jani has won two sprints and two feature races, awarded with 100,000 and 200,000 dollars each respectively. The Swiss car has been on pole position six times, Jani set the fastest race lap on five occasions and scored a podium finish five times. No other country can show such good results.