The second round of the 2008/09 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport will take place this weekend at the Chengdu International Circuit in the Sichuan province of China. Felipe Guimarães will be driving once again for A1 Team Brazil, four weeks after his debut A1GP race weekend in Zandvoort.
Chengdu is a brand new venue for A1GP and has previously held rounds of the Asian Touring Car and Formula V6 Asia Championships. The 3.367km clockwise circuit lies 16km from the city of Chengdu in the South West of China. Featuring a long front straight and 13 turns, the track is likely to promote overtaking due to its wide nature.
After a race against time at Zandvoort to get the new A1GP Powered by Ferrari car in action ready for Sunday’s races, A1 Team Brazil is looking forward to a more usual race weekend this time out. The team completed two days of running at Silverstone after the Netherlands round and, in Chengdu, Felipe will benefit from driving in Friday morning’s rookie practice session before all teams compete in the two further one-hour practice sessions. Qualifying will take place on Saturday afternoon with the Sprint and Feature races on Sunday.
The A1GP Chengdu, China event will see the A1 Team Brazil car racing for the first time in its brand new livery. The team have an all-new visual identity, which has been designed by renowned Catalan-Brazilian artist Francesc Petit. Born in Barcelona in 1934, Petit emigrated to Brazil in 1952 and took the world of advertising by storm with his paintings and designs. He has held prestigious posts at global agencies JWT and McCann-Erickson and is today Creative Director at DPZ – one of the largest agencies in the world.
The new car features an eye-catching metallic silver body, with the traditional Brazilian flag colours of yellow and green used on the front and rear wings, air intake, mirrors and cockpit area.
Emerson Fittipaldi, Team Principal: “For us the championship starts in China. We had a few problems at the test in Silverstone but that should all be solved by this weekend. The Netherlands race was mission impossible for us really, we were able to start the race but it was in far from ideal circumstances. Now though, Felipe has more experience with the car and we are much better prepared so we are looking forward to a good race weekend. I am really looking forward to seeing our new car in action in the new livery. The livery has been created by a very famous artist in Brazil and is designed to show off the beauty and lines of the new A1GP Powered by Ferrari car without cluttering it with too much colour.”
Felipe Guimarães: “We are in a much better position heading to China now that we have two days of testing completed. We ran at Silverstone and had a very productive first day. The second day was not as good as we had a few problems but we still managed to test a lot of things and, overall, it was good. It was very important for us to complete some dry running and I now have a much better feeling for the car, which is fantastic. I’m really happy with the car and I’m looking forward to driving this weekend, and I’m aiming for a strong result.”
