A1 Team South Africa had the distinction of being the first team to complete a timed lap in the new A1GP Powered by Ferrari car at the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport pre-season test at Donington Park in England this week. The team was also the first to crash test the new car when 21-year-old Adrian Zaugg spun the distinctively-liveried Vulindlela in wet conditions on Thursday morning and hit a safety barrier.

The 21-year-old South African lost control of the rear end of Vulindlela as he applied the power of the new 600hp Ferrari engine in Donington?s ultra-fast downhill Craner curves. The car gracefully completed a full 360-degree clockwise spin before meeting the barrier nose first, which resulted in a rapid 360 degree-plus counter-clockwise pirouette that was over in less time than the blink of an eye. The frontal contact put paid to the front wing and nose assembly of the car and there was also contact between the rear wing and the barrier.

The test session on Tuesday and Thursday was the first opportunity for the 23 teams contesting the fourth season of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport to familiarise themselves with the new car. The new season, with 10 rounds including the A1GP Gauteng, South Africa on 22 February 2009, starts at Zandvoort in Holland on 5 October.

Mike Carroll, general manager of A1 Team South Africa, was pleased with the team's first encounter with the new car. "It was great to finally get our new car on to the track. It really is a stunning example of detail engineering with beautifully manufactured components evident throughout. More importantly, though, is the fact that the cars ran reliably throughout the two test days — again testament to the level of engineering detail that has gone into their design.

"Tuesday was just a shakedown test for A1 Team RSA — basically a run of the car to test all the systems and ensure that they were working properly. We only ran half of the day as the attendant engineers from the various concerns involved with the race car's systems had to carefully divide their attention among the participating teams. Obviously we were delighted that everything ran as planned — very often with new cars, this is not the case. As it was wet throughout for us, it was difficult to assess overall performance levels but Adrian was very impressed with the level of grip in the wet.

"Thursday started out wet again and unfortunately Adrian went off and crashed into the wall. This put paid to the rest of the morning for us. After lunch the circuit was dry and with the car fully repaired we were able to commence some dry weather testing.

"Adrian was a little hamstrung with some mid-corner oversteer and while the first test did not provide a complete cure, Humphrey (engineer Humphrey Corbett) made some changes to negate this. Humphrey?s primary focus was to run through the first of the many sweeps that we need to get through. In layman's terms, a sweep is basically where we change one specific set-up parameter (e.g. ride height, tyre pressure, camber) a number of times through the greater part of its adjustment range to identify the sweet spot for that parameter.

"Prior to the next running of the race car (a further two-day test is scheduled for Snetterton circuit in England on 23 and 24 September), we will look to make Adrian a little more comfortable in the car. A1GP should have some of the different seat shell and steering column options available by then to facilitate this," said Carroll.