2005 A1GP Championship - Round 3 - Estoril

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:24

2005 A1GP Championship
Round 3 - Estoril

Overview

Located on the northern coast of the estuary of the River Tagus. It can be found in the hills behind the once-glamorous resort town of Estoril - which has grand hotels reminiscent of the French Riviera and a huge casino - and the small fishing port of Cascais.

An ever-present on the F1 calendar between 1984 and 1996, Estoril was removed from the 1997 schedule after the FIA were unhappy with the status of redevelopment work on the circuit.With a track lay-out very similar to its Iberian counterpart at Barcelona, the track is hard on the tyres and with long sweeping turns the circuit can be tiring for the drivers.
In February 2000 the revised circuit was finally re-granted a testing license for Formula 1 cars.

Length: 4360 m
Turns: 15
Direction: Clockwise
Total Distance: 309,560 km
Fastest Lap: Damon Hill 1993 (Williams/Renault) 1:14.859 min.

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:24

Championship standing after round 2

Code:

[b]
Pos	Country		Points	Sprint	Feature Poles	Fastest
				Wins	Wins		laps[/b]
1	Brazil		30	1	1	1	2	
2	France		29	1	1	1	-	
3	New Zealand	29	-	-	-	-	
4	Switzerland	17	-	-	-	-	
5	Australia	16	-	-	-	-	
6	Mexico		16	-	-	-	-	
7	Great Britain	15	-	-	-	-	
8	Canada		14	-	-	-	-	
9	Malaysia	11	-	-	-	-	
10	Germany		8	-	-	-	-	
11	Netherlands	8	-	-	-	-	
12	Ireland		8	-	-	-	-	
13	Japan		6	-	-	-	-	
14	South Africa	5	-	-	-	-	
15	Pakistan	4	-	-	-	-	
16	Indonesia	3	-	-	-	-	
17	Portugal	3	-	-	-	-

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:27

Changes for Estoril

Ahead of this weekend's third round of the A1 GP Championship, Lola - manufacturers of the A1 car - have made a couple of minor changes.

Following the scenes at Brands Hatch and Lausitz, when the pit crew struggled with wheel nuts, and consequently, pit stops became a lottery, Lola has produced a new wheel nut with a longer lead in: The teams will have to fettle the hubs, but it should be a significant improvement."

There wasn't really anything wrong with the original design," added the spokesman, "however some teams were rushing things and consequently the nut cross-threaded."

Of the problems with batteries, the spokesman said: "There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the two we have used, many teams seem incapable of good 'battery management', putting part charged items on the car.

"There was a problem of vibration with the larger battery," he added, "therefore, a new support tray has been designed to alleviate this."

It's understood that much of the Estoril weekend will be wet.

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:31

Extra practice sessions at Estoril

There will be two additional forty-minute practice sessions at Estoril next weekend ahead of the first scheduled free practice session on Friday.

The reason for the extra sessions is in order to give some extra time to the five teams that entered A1 at the very last moment, and thereby missed the Paul Ricard test, and also to allow teams to run the chassis and engines that have not yet run.

All 25 teams will run in the extra sessions.

18 of the teams now have their second cars, the remaining 7 will have their cars shipped to Estoril (unpainted), where they will then be forwarded with the rest of the A1 'package' on to Australia, where they will be prepared for the Eastern Creek race on November 4-6.

Next Friday's sessions will take place at 09:30 and 10:50.

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:32

Do we want the previous threads archived?

This may be the only A1GP season... *doubtfull tbh - after all the money thats been spent on it*

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:38

Previous threads to be archived...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17473330 - Round 1 - Brands Hatch

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17479812 - Round 2 - Eurospeedway

Simon/~Flibster

el_dazza · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:42

ahh.. estoril. one of my favourite racing circuits, but havent really seen much of it since it disappeared off the f1 calendar back in '97

british win this weekend?

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:54

We can hope.

Estoril is where I had my first F1 Experience so I have very fond memories of the place.

Week there with the Tyrrell team - Dinner with Johnathan Palmer, Jean Alesi, Ken Tyrrell and members of the team at a seriously posh resturant...that Palmer paid for himself :eek:

Was also 13 or something at the time...

It's a superb track and facilities as well. Love the place - it's an old school track where you can overtake.

Should be an entertaining race.

Simon/~Flibster

Steve · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:56

Slight OT but is this where the name for the for the colour of my M3 comes from?

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 21:59

Dunno - what colour is your M3?

Scarfacé · 21 Oct 2005 at 22:04

Estoril Blue I assume.

According to Google: -

Estoril Blue - Estoril, Portugal - Grand Prix of Portugal

http://bimmer.roadfly.com/z3coupe/messages/archive/msgsy2000w51/29334.html

Steve · 21 Oct 2005 at 22:05

Scarfacé said:
Estoril Blue I assume.

Indeed, first time I have heard the term other than the M3 colour

Scarfacé · 21 Oct 2005 at 22:09

Hehe, see my edit. I was actually thinking about this last night, very strange.

Flibster · 21 Oct 2005 at 22:10

Probably - it is a classic circuit...

Simon/~Flibster

Steve · 21 Oct 2005 at 22:16

That explains it.

Hopefully the thread can get back on topic now

rpstewart · 22 Oct 2005 at 08:05

For the earth surfers amongst us

Google Eath link for Estoril

Joe T · 22 Oct 2005 at 10:24

Is that proxy server goin to work again, so we can watch the online stream?

Looking forward to this one, hopefully GB can do well.

Flibster · 22 Oct 2005 at 10:29

Driver selections

Code:

[b]Team		Driver1			Driver2[/b]
Australia:	Christian Jones		Will Davidson 
Austria:	Mathias Lauda 
Brazil:		Nelson Piquet Jr	Tuka Rocha 
Canada:		Sean McIntosh 
China:		Tengyi Jiang 
Czech Republic:	Tomas Enge		Jan Charouz 
France:		Alexandre Premat	Nicolas Lapierre 
Germany:	Adrian Sutil 
Great Britain:	Robbie Kerr		Alex Lloyd 
India:		Armaan Ebrahim 
Indonesia:	Ananda Mikola 
Ireland:	Ralph Firman		Michael Devaney 
Italy:		Enrico Toccacelo	Matteo Cressoni 
Lebanon:	Basil Shaaban		Khalil Beschir 
Malaysia:	Fairuz Fauzy 
Mexico:		Salvador Duran 
Netherlands:	Jos Verstappen		Jeroen Bleekemolen 
New Zealand:	Jonny Reid		Matt Halliday 
Pakistan:	Adam Khan 
Portugal:	Alvaro Parente		Joao Barbosa 
Russia:		Alexander Truryumin	Mikhail Aleshin 
South Africa:	Stephen Simpson		Tomas Scheckter 
Switzerland:	Neel Jani 
USA:		Scott Speed

Flibster · 22 Oct 2005 at 11:10

Once again - live timing is available here...

http://www.catmoto.com/TempsOnLine/pagines/cursa.asp

Firestar_3x · 22 Oct 2005 at 11:15

You going to post the live feed when available Si?