Full Throttle

The third round of the World Cup of Motorsports will be held on the famed Circuito do Estoril in Estoril, Portugal, the last stop on the European continet before heading south to Australia. The circuit’s list of drivers competing at Estoril is as legendary as it is long, including Alain Prost for McLaren-TAG Porsche to Michael Schumacher as part of the Benetton-Ford Team.

After Team Russia sat out the Laustizring round of the series in Germany, Team Japan has confirmed that it will miss this weekend’s event. They cited prior commitments by their two drivers as the reason for missing the Portuguese round. Russia returns this week with either Alexander Truryumin or Mikhail Aleshin behind the wheel.

Team France, which dominated round two, will revert to Alex Premat who drove in round one. Nicolas Lapierre who dominated two weeks ago retains a place as back-up this week. Christian Jones (Australia), Mathias Lauda (Austria), Sean McIntosh (Canada), Tomas Enge (Czech Republic), Robbie Kerr (GB), Ananda Mikola (Indonesia), Ralph Firman (Ireland), Enrico Toccacelo (Italy), Jos Verstappen (Holland), Jonny Reid (New Zealand), Adam Khan (Pakistan), Alvaro Parente (Portugal), Neel Jani (Switzerland) and Scott Speed (USA) all keep their number one seats they held in Germany.

This weeks changes include Adrian Sutil for Germany, Armaan Ibrahim (India) and Basil Shabaan (Lebanon). Salvador Duran (Mexico) and Stephen Simpson (South Africa) return to number one after missing the last round. Fairuz Fauzy has been confirmed as Malaysia’s only participant this round, as the country switches from the divided line-up policy that saw Alex Yoong contest one race alongside Fauzy in the opening two rounds.

This should be an interesting test of both drivers and cars. Estoril has a reputation for having a rough surface hard on tires and with it’s long sweeping turns a test of drivers stamina. As a comparison the track record was set by Damon Hill (1:14.659 in 1993) while driving for the Williams-Renault F1 Team. Another thing to watch is weather. Estoril is only a few miles from the westernmost point of Europe and is often affected by strong winds and rain storms coming off the Atlantic Ocean.

A1 Grand Prix, Auto Racing, Sports