19/02/2007
NEWS STORY
Glowing mid-term report for A1 Team Germany after seven of eleven A1 GP World Cup of Motorsport race weekends: Six wins from 14 individual races is the outcome for the team of Stuttgart based Motorsport Manager Willi Weber. On its previous two outings the team occupied pole position in New Zealand and Australia and won both the sprint and main race at each event. In Durban, South Africa on Sunday the team aims to fight for overall honours yet again – again with Nico Hülkenberg (right) from Emmerich at the wheel.
The 3.28 kilometre circuit in Durban on the South African Pacific coast played host to the A1 GP World Cup of Motorsport last season already. "We have excellent analysis data of the circuit from last year", emphasises Willi Weber, whose team lies 25 points ahead of the New Zealand and France national teams in the table. "You need strong nerves to go to the limit on a street circuit without large run-off areas. Nico has them", says Weber "In the cockpit he is totally concentrated. The team is in the thick of a title battle and is highly motivated. After our victories everybody is expecting us to win again, which is a similar situation to the one Michael Schumacher was often in. The pressure to perform drives everybody even more to deliver the goods."
Nico Hülkenberg has competed on every race weekend for A1 Team Germany to date and has recorded fastest lap in qualifying twice, two sprint race wins and four main race victories in the progress. "I"m especially looking forward to Durban, because I love street circuits", says the 19-year old Rheinlander, who, due to conflicting dates, will vacate his cockpit at the following race in Mexico and will be replaced by Christian Vietoris. "I watched last year"s race, which was sold-out, on video. I discuss the first ideas about car set-up on the flight together with my engineer Rob Creswell from our race team David Sears Motorsport. I can trust this team implicitly. Even though I made a bad start in Australia the team helped me take the win thanks to an excellent pit stop."