Got my Vip tickets to A1 gp tomorrow...

Kersh

The team launch is tomorrow - Sweeeet, Maktoum will be there too, should be good - only thing is the car isnt here yet...... should be by tomorrow.
Ill take pics for all you guys.............unlees any of you will be there.

Rivadavia

What's happening at the event? Is the reserve driver going to be named or what?

Kersh

no, its just the official car launch of Team Ireland, Firman will be there, and the backers, and the people who created it, as awell as some of the drivers from other countries. Ill be there for a while, then Im off to Mudhoney at the Village. Ill bring my camera.

Kali

Firman won't be racing the first two weekends from what I hear.. it'll be that plonker Michael Devaney stepping in instead.

Kersh

First I heard Firman had Jp gt races, but then I heard he will be in A1 gp car for Brands. According to everyone in work, Firman will be racing it.

Kersh

You are right Kali, Firman is missing Brands, and Devaney is taking the seat. The car is green, with a white/orange stripe, white on sidepods, and an orange section just aft of the sidepod. As far as I could see, anyone could have gone to it.. y,all should have come :rolleyes: .
I hope the racing is good.

Running Bing

where was it kersh?

molateen

Ther must be somebody better than Devanney .

No offence to mr devanney but he has been racing in Germany for the last couple of years . There must be someone who knows brands hatch well who would be a better option and is proven over a couple of years .

Adam Carroll maybe (northern irish I know but Irish none the less)
Damien Faulkner has good pedigree in England

There must be plenty more . It looks like favours to the boys to me . He will be end of grid material .

Scott speed , Robbie Kerr , Jos Verstappen , Thomas Enge --- Micheal Devanney . It doesnt quite look right . He will be eaten for breakfast .

Running Bing

I'll take it devaneys crap then. Shame I was looking forward to ireland putting up a serious challenge at brands hatch. What does devaney race at the moment? also I havent seen him but I assume Adam Carroll must have some talent as hes done some testing for bar under their young drivers program and hes had some impressive results in gp2.

Rivadavia

I bet I know how he got it....

....It was chequebooks at dawn!

Beekay

And Devaney has only had a few laps in the car.
Adam Carroll is prob the best option,he has had experience in cars with around the same speed,and would know Brands alot better.

Rivadavia

If it had anything to do with Nationality and putting the best Irish driver forward, I think Faulkner would have got it.

Beekay

what does faulkner do now?last time i seen him was in the Porsche in the uk.

Rivadavia

He is still doing it. And leading the championship:

http://www11.porsche.com/uk/motorsportandevents/motorsport/raceactivities/raceactivities-pccgb/pccgb-results/

http://www.damienfaulkner.com/NewSite/Pages/Home.htm

Perception is probably that he is too old. What a load of rubbish. He's leading Tim Harvey who won the BTCC.

Beekay

it could also be that he isn't in single seaters,I was at the launch aswell.And they named off alot of single seater drivers like John O'Hara,Richard Lyons and Adam Carroll being in contention for the seat

gs39t

I'm hoping to go tommorrow - anyone know how much the tickets are? It's been 7 years since i was at Mondello, how much of the track can spectators access now?

aidan_dunne

Personally, I would have loved to have seen Richard Lyons driving for the Irish team. He's a driver I rate very highly but he seems to be almost forgotten by the Irish motorsport fraternity, mainly because he's competing "over there" in Japan all the time so there doesn't seem to be much coverage of his exploits over here as a result. Reminds me a bit of when Eddie Irvine was racing over there in the early nineties, nobody here seemed to take much notice of him when he was racing over there yet, in Japan, he was treated almost like a god (the Japs just love their motorsport and treat racing drivers as gods).

Though, with no disrespect to the A1GP series, I think Lyons is probably hoping for a "bigger" or more high profile drive in motorsport. I think he's holding out still for the F1 drive to come along some day. I'd love to see him get it and I think he could do well in F1 but I fear that, like so many other drivers, he'll never get that chance. Also, as I said, by continuing to race in Japan, he's kind of isolating himself from the F1 community, I think. Times seem to have changed these days from the days of the early- to mid-nineties when the Japanese F3000/Formula Nippon championship was seen as a real breeding ground for young talent (Eddie Irvine and Ralf Schumacher being probably the best known of the former Jap F3000/Nippon drivers to make their way into F1). I don't think F1 team bosses are looking towards Japan as much as they used to for new talent, I think junior European series' seems to be the "in thing" these days (F3, GP2, Renault World Series, etc.). Hence my fear that Lyons may not get his big break by staying over in Japan. Maybe he needs to see about coming "back home", so to speak, for a bit and try GP2 or something to re-establish himself within the European and F1 racing community.

As I said, I would have liked to see Lyons driving for the Irish A1GP team (I would have picked him over Devaney anyday, to be honest) but I think he might have turned down the drive had it been offered to him anyway as it definitely seems that he's holding out for something "bigger".

andyman

There was a rumour racing around like Fernando Alonso saying that Mansell and Jody Schechter would be racing in A1 this year. I would've liked to see Tomas in the RSA car.

Beekay

andyman wrote:

There was a rumour racing around like Fernando Alonso saying that Mansell and Jody Schechter would be racing in A1 this year. I would've liked to see Tomas in the RSA car.

Are they not racing in that Grand Prix Masters?

JohnC.

Will anyone other than Sky Sports be broadcasting A1? I'm not getting Sky Sports just for this and I have not seen it advertised on Irish channels. I assume that BBC, ITV or C4 won't have it if Sky does. Now that we actually have an Irish team, it would be dissapointing if an Irish channel didn't pick it up. Unless Sky did a deal for Irish rights too...

ando

yea I'm not getting sky football just for this, i'm hoping sedanta or rte will show it

Brian Kerramba

The idea that Damien Faulkner was not first choice for this seat is ridiculous!

He regularly beat Robbie Kerr on his way to the European Palmer Audi Championship in 2000 and ran Dan Wheldon close for the rookie of the year title in Indy Lights in 2001, if he wasn't struggling to survive week to week when not in the cockpit I have no doubts he would have won that title too.

He picked up the the UK Porsche Carrera Cup title, yesterady, with two rounds to spare.

Richard Lyons races in Japan with a Union Jack on his car/overalls (as did Ralph Firman in Japan) and the idea of him representing Ireland is as unpalatable as Ralph Firman racing for Ireland after first trying to get into the British seat!

I'm delighted that Michael Devaney has got the drive, he is winning regularly in German F3, he's Irish and he can only learn from this experience.

aidan_dunne

Brian Kerramba wrote:

The idea that Damien Faulkner was not first choice for this seat is ridiculous!

He regularly beat Robbie Kerr on his way to the European Palmer Audi Championship in 2000 and ran Dan Wheldon close for the rookie of the year title in Indy Lights in 2001, if he wasn't struggling to survive week to week when not in the cockpit I have no doubts he would have won that title too.

He picked up the the UK Porsche Carrera Cup title, yesterady, with two rounds to spare.

I agree with you about Faulkner to a certain extent. A great driver, no doubt, and one who I've been a big fan of for a long time. So sad to see that he ended up being another one of these drivers who didn't get the "big break" into the higher levels of motorsport which he clearly deserved.

If this was maybe a couple of years ago I certainly would have believed Faulkner should have been first choice for this drive, no doubt. However, the past few years he's had little or no single seater experience and most of his drives have been in "tin tops" and sportscars. Therefore, he's bound to be quite rusty when it comes to single seaters at this stage compared to the likes of Lyons, Firman, Devaney, etc., who have all still been racing single seaters in that time. That's probably one of the major reasons why he wasn't selected for this drive either. A case of being in the wrong place, or rather having the wrong opportunity pop up, at the wrong time for him, I guess. As I said, if this was a couple of years ago, while his single seater skills were still "fresh", so to speak, it may have been a completely different story for Faulkner.

Brian Kerramba wrote:

Richard Lyons races in Japan with a Union Jack on his car/overalls (as did Ralph Firman in Japan) and the idea of him representing Ireland is as unpalatable as Ralph Firman racing for Ireland after first trying to get into the British seat!

I'm delighted that Michael Devaney has got the drive, he is winning regularly in German F3, he's Irish and he can only learn from this experience.

Well, on this one I have to disagree with you. Ralph Firman is perfectly entitled to race for either the Irish or British teams as he has dual nationality (mother is Irish, father is English, holds both an Irish and UK passport). When he was racing in F1 with Jordan his car had an Irish flag beside his name on the car and in the results he was always classified as an Irish driver as that was the nationality he chose to race under in F1. So I can't see any reason why he can't race for the Irish A1 team as a result, he's perfectly entitled to.

As for Lyons, well, I'm not too sure about his nationality status (that is, of course, one of the main selling points of A1GP, that all the drivers, sponsors, etc., have to come from the country of the team they're racing for). He's from the North, obviously, so he must be considered as a UK citizen then but the question is would he have also been eligible to race as an Irish driver? Does he also have an Irish passport, for example? Maybe someone here could tell me that as I'm not sure. But, if he had been eligible, I still think I would have chosen him over Devaney. Why? Well, he's been competing in cars with a lot more power than, say, Devaney's F3 car and with closer characteristics to these A1GP cars, I reckon (Formula Nippon cars), the past couple of seasons. So it wouldn't have been too much of an adjustment for him, I think. Whereas I think the jump in power and everything else that these new A1GP cars will present Devaney over an F3 car is going to take him a lot more getting used to.

Beekay

aidan_dunne wrote:

As for Lyons, well, I'm not too sure about his nationality status (that is, of course, one of the main selling points of A1GP, that all the drivers, sponsors, etc., have to come from the country of the team they're racing for). He's from the North, obviously, so he must be considered as a UK citizen then but the question is would he have also been eligible to race as an Irish driver? Does he also have an Irish passport, for example? Maybe someone here could tell me that as I'm not sure. But, if he had been eligible, I still think I would have chosen him over Devaney. Why? Well, he's been competing in cars with a lot more power than, say, Devaney's F3 car and with closer characteristics to these A1GP cars, I reckon (Formula Nippon cars), the past couple of seasons. So it wouldn't have been too much of an adjustment for him, I think. Whereas I think the jump in power and everything else that these new A1GP cars will present Devaney over an F3 car is going to take him a lot more getting used to.

From what i gathered at the launch,A1 team Ireland is Republic and Northern Ireland put together(like rugby).
The creator of the series Mctomb(i don't know how to spell it but you know what i mean) made Team Great Britain change their name from Team United Kingdom when Ireland wanted to join so we wouldn't have to be called Team Republic Of Ireland.
So i think Carrol,Lyons and any other Northern Irish drivers are only eligable for Team Ireland(although i could be corrected on this)

andyman

Beekay wrote:

From what i gathered at the launch,A1 team Ireland is Republic and Northern Ireland put together(like rugby).
The creator of the series Mctomb(i don't know how to spell it but you know what i mean) made Team Great Britain change their name from Team United Kingdom when Ireland wanted to join so we wouldn't have to be called Team Republic Of Ireland.
So i think Carrol,Lyons and any other Northern Irish drivers are only eligable for Team Ireland(although i could be corrected on this)

If this was the case what about Eddie Irvine(although he is old).

aidan_dunne

andyman wrote:

If this was the case what about Eddie Irvine(although he is old).

Nah, I think he's enjoying his retirement too much to think about getting back into the driving seat again. Mind you, if I was also spending all my time sailing around the world on my luxury yacht, shagging loads of hot supermodels every night of the week*, I'd probably feel the same as him and would also be saying to myself, "A1 Grand Prix? Bollocks to that! Come on Bambi, get your kit off and assume the position! Now, where did I put the KY Jelly?"





*the lucky ba$tard!

Beekay

If Eddie was gonna have anything to do with A1 Team Ireland,i think he would have been the owner,but he was too busy tryin to buy Minardi at the time

Mossy Monk

Kahless wrote:

Unless Sky did a deal for Irish rights too...

that is exactly what they did
bought Irish and UK rights