A1GP Season 3 - news, views, rumours...

[cos]

It's only just under 5 months until A1GP season 3 kicks off at Zandvoort. There'll also be a 2-day test at Silverstone International on 28/29 August. In the meantime, A1 Team USA are branding Buddy Rice's car in the Indy 500 which should get a tad more publicity for the series at least.

Season 2 was full of good things but there's always room for improvement. My thoughts for A1's next season:

• Make sure all teams commit to the whole season. Grids of 24 or 26 at some races are nice, but it makes the series look unstable if smaller teams like Greece and Singapore dip in and out of the championship. 22 teams that contest the whole season is good enough.
• Tighter schedule, 10-12 races would be fine, keeping it more in the motorsport "off-season". This avoids stepping on F1's toes and would hopefully allow more drivers to take part who might otherwise race in clashing series.
• Try and steer away from street-races - they bring bigger publicity to the local area but cost a hell of a lot more and bring far too many variables. Stick with one or two viable street courses that have good local and political support and don't shed money.
• Qualifying format - excellent. Don't change a thing.
• "Rookie" sessions - excellent; gives teams a chance to try out youngsters and also permits "developing motorsport nations" extra time
• Sprint/feature race format needs sorting out. Either go back to the format of season 1 (two equal length races) or just have one main race on raceday (2 stops mandatory, like DTM). At the moment the sprint race is a bit of a non-event, no prize money, no live coverage on SkySports etc. If the season 1 format is used, have a reverse grid lineup of sorts for race 2 to spice things up.
• Continue to limit outfits like SuperNova/WSR running more than one team, except for "developing motorsport nations". Introduce something that requires X% of a team's crew to be of the country of the team they are running.
• Hold a race in the USA (again).
• TV - improve the TV coverage! It would be great to have free-to-air live coverage here in the UK for example, but with Sky on board that won't happen for the time being. Five's highlights are better than nothing, but at 3am they're pretty wasted. Why not put the 1 hour A1GP highlights package on FiveUS at primetime a couple of days after the race - this is what they're doing with IRL, ALMS and NASCAR (I think).