What Is Wrong With A1GP? An A1GPOnline.com & DutchA1GP.nl Exclusive

A1GP, the self proclaimed World Cup of Motorsport, is heading into its fourth season of competition. But, the series seems continuously beseeched by problems of one sort or another.

Throughout the first three seasons, problems were expected but now with established world renowned brands of Ferrari and Michelin on board, you would expect things to steadily progress in a positive manner.

Or would you?

It appears that since these two famous names joined the series, at the expense of Lola, Zytek and Cooper Tyres, (all of whom did a superb job), things have taken a turn for the worse.

To begin with, there was absolutely nothing on the new A1GP ‘Powered by Ferrari’ car until May 12^th 2008, a whole seven months after the Ferrari announcement was made and five months from the official beginning of the partnership.

Now to us, this seems a very long gap and surely the designing phase should have been completed a long time before.

But no, it couldn’t have been completed any earlier because the new car  was  first tested on May 27th, 2008 at Ferrari’s test track Fiorano, less than 4 months before the scheduled start of the 2008-09 A1GP season at Mugello, Italy.

Then, everyone was anticipating a brilliant calendar from A1GP, particularly after Pete de Silva (CEO A1GP Holdings Ltd) and Tony Texeira  (Chairman A1GP) had stated that nations were queuing up to stage a round of the World Cup of Motorsport.

But again, it was a major disappointment. It consists of eleven rounds with only seven dates confirmed; three Venues,  one in China, South Africa, and Great Britain respectively are TBA, one more round posbibly in the mix.

At the time of writing, the date of the Chinese round has been changed and a new venue announced. South Africa has also had their venue confirmed with Brands retaining the rights to the British round of the championship, but the TBA Nation is still awaited.

To further everyone’s frustrations, Mugello was postponed by A1GP Organizers due to a "lack of readily available parts and teams not having enough time to acclimatize themselves with the new cars."

Mugello has now been completely wiped off the schedule with no alternative date for  it found within the A1GP calendar. The Official Test Session at Silverstone during the middle of August was cancelled because of a lack of cars. Both instances are severe examples of a lack of organization from A1GP Management.

Anyone noticing a pattern yet or shall we continue on?

Then we have the very well concealed story of the A1GP car crashing during testing and injuring its driver, former A1 Team Austria driver Patrick Friesacher.

Although not seriously injured, he has been injured enough to be forced into missing the next few events of his American Le Mans campaign. Friesacher sustained 3 crushed vertebrae in the crash, and will be sidelined for a while.

We at A1GPOnline.com and DutchA1GP.nl would like to wish Patrick a quick recovery from all injuries sustained in the crash.

This incident has led to a redesign of the suspension which, in turn, contributed to the cancelled Official Test Session at Silverstone in August.

Surely, things could only be on the up after all these problems. Right? We think not....

Media coverage of the series is gradually being destroyed across the globe, particularly online. Websites that traditionally offer exclusive A1GP coverage are being ousted because we don’t offer the best coverage for the series.

Now to us, this is ridiculous. How can our sites not be providing the best coverage for the series when A1GP is considering giving access to sites and organizations which have little or no coverage of A1GP at all?

We also know that our sites bring in more unique hits in a week than A1GP.com—the official A1GP Website—brings in on a weekly basis. To us, that is definitely not the best possible media coverage. What do you think?

Now, shift the focus onto the official website A1GP.com, where we have now realized that articles from months ago are now being republished as NEW news!

Take, for example, Satrio Hermanto's laser eye surgery, which was originally released on A1GPOnline.com and the official site on August 05^th 2008. It has since been released as a new article and as a headline article on the front page of A1GP.com a month later.

Republishing old news does not seem very professional. Why do this? Are they having more problems and are trying to deceive us by republishing news?

A final point of interest is the marketing, on the part of A1GP, of the series. Yes it is brilliant. Yes the series does have great racing. But, these factors alone will not market the series to prospective fans and business partners.

There needs to be more activity from each competing nation and wider promotion to help promote the series.

Netherlands, Great Britain, and France are prime examples of quality promoting (with France even their car on tour with the Tour de France).

In non competing nations, the series as a whole can be promoted to assist with attracting new and much needed business partners and nations to compete. Sales wise, each nation needs its own merchandise range, unique to them, that can be sold at the circuit and online. Again, it is Team Netherlands that excel at this.

But most importantly of all, why is A1GP acting as if they are a stock exchange company? They are clearly not, so why are they acting so? It is not needed!

The corporate identity that the series has garnered is beginning to fracture and this identity really needs to be reversed whilst it is still possible. Also, it is essential that if any event or competing nation is unwilling or unable to reach marketing and promotional agreements, A1GP needs to step in.

There are many ways that the series can be promoted by A1GP alone, and just going to all the major motor shows (such as SEMA) across the globe will benefit the series immensely. They should spend some money now, and reap the rewards later.

Regardless of all these problems, when A1GP get down to finally racing with the new ‘Powered by Ferrari’ cars, the championship will hopefully be the most exciting yet, in A1GP’s relatively short history.

But remember, in previous seasons  more information was known at the outset, from nations and drivers competing to a fuller and more substantial, firm calendar.

For a series which is aimed at the fans, A1GP is doing the complete and utter opposite in disrespecting many fans, who have injected so much of their hard earned money into the series. Without fans, there is no A1GP!

We at A1GPonline.com and DutchA1GP.nl voice our concern for the survival of the series we have come to love, and we are more than willing to work with A1GP to help the series grow and flourish.

Alex                   A1GPOnline.com                                 

Richard             Assistant Website Editor

Hugo                 DutchA1GP.nl

We in no way suggest through this article that we do not continue to support A1GP and the series as a whole, however we have produced this in an effort to get the view of the fans recognized.