Nicolas Prost was testing in Silverstone!

Silverstone, Great Britain – A1GP World Cup of Motorsport was in action again today in Silverstone, Northamptonshire, UK with some teams taking the opportunity to get some extra track time ahead of the second round of the season A1GP Chengdu, China 7 – 9 November.

A1 Teams France, Brazil and Switzerland had no pre-season testing before arriving in Zandvoort for the season-opener earlier this month.

However, it was A1 Team Ireland who set the pace, with Adam Carroll putting the disappointment of spinning out of both Zandvoort races behind him, to clock a superb lap of 45.554-seconds right at the end of the day. The lap was more than two seconds quicker than the previous best A1GP lap on the National layout, set by India’s Narain Karthikeyan in testing one year ago. Reigning champion Switzerland was just a fraction behind, with Neel Jani setting a lap just 0.148 seconds slower than Ireland. However, Jani is confident that there is much more speed to be found in the car.

Although the lack of track time in Zandvoort didn’t seem to matter to A1 Team France, with Loïc Duval powering to victory in the Feature race, the team decided to make use of the optional test day to call upon the services of regular rookie Nicolas Prost, the son of four-time Formula 1 champion Alain.

Nicolas Prost’s best time was good enough for third quickest – 0.756s behind Ireland’s best.

Nicolas said: “The car is easy to drive but not easy to go really fast because you have to push very hard. It’s great fun to drive because you can go in to the corner with a lot of speed. The traction is pretty good, the brakes amazing, there is a lot of downforce, so it’s really a fantastic car. I’ve only driven this circuit in the first A1GP car, and it is quite a big difference.”

Testing will continue at Silverstone next Monday (27 October) before the cars head to China for round two, A1GP Chengdu, 7-9 November 2008.

Official Test Session (combined times)

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