Missed the feature race 'cause it was in the middle of the night here but the sprint race was fairly entertaining. Cars look a little chunky (for lack of a better word) but they move around quite good and the racing is close. Pretty much all the grid seemed up to standard as well.

Great result for NZ. The team were saying they expected this to be their worst round, so if that's true then they're a definite title contender.

I think the analogy to olympic competition is somewhat valid with drivers representing a country. It did add an interesting spin to it I thought. When you consider that drivers can be swapped around at will it will add some interest to future rounds with ringers from higher leagues potentionally stepping in. Some of the road-course specialists from US leagues might start popping in at some point. Kanaan and Dixon have both been talked about which will give Brazil and NZ even more advantage than they already seem to have.

All in all a pretty solid start to series that I expect will only improve.

Indeed he's back.
After having to start 25th in the feature race, he passed the finish line as number 11 after only one lap. A 7th place finish isn't that bad after such a lousy starting place.

I thought the driving was awful quality wise... they were all over the place. Half of them didn't know where to put the car.

That makes it entertaining, but I want to see some inspired displays too. F1 is too processional, this is too random. A mix would be nice...

These are basically just inferior GP2 cars with bits bolted on in my opinion. As Greg said in the MSN convo at the time, once the novelty has worn off, it'll just be any other feeder series.

I like the engine note though.

I agree with most of that actually, but this was only the first race. Let's see how it pans out....

I thought the Podium cemory was a bit messy really.

I understand the medals etc, but imo it would have been better to simply have the norm motor-racing trophies, and a wreth... in the gold, silver & bronze colours.

What they did just seemed messy and cluttered.

Medals?

ok well i was there and got to see the flip by lebanon perfectly and thank god the guy was ok

I think it has the ability to be entertaining however for it to take off in uk it needs to be on free to view tv either as a 1 hour highlights package say a week later on BBC or live.

I thought the race was pretty good to watch even though the cars seemed a little slow to what i was hoping but there were some good overtaking more than f1 but not as much as i was expecting.

Overall a good series for the winter but some drivers really need help being so much off the pace and to carry on it needs some proper tv coverage in all countries.

Didn't catch the feature race so it may have been more-pronounced there, but in the sprint race the quality wasn't so bad... maybe just because I was expecting cars to be spearing off and crashing into each other all over the place and lapped cars getting in the way...

Oh it is only a feeder series. I don't expect it to ever come close to rivaling F1 in terms of the elite.

However the novelty part is exactly what it has going for it over other similarly spec'd series. I think the novelty is more likely to grow than fall away at this point.

Are I correct the car that got flipped over are from Libya instead of Lebanon?

I thought the feature race as great, lots of excitement and entertainment.

The sprint was as dull as a f1 race, and qualifying was not followable due to the lack of on screen timing.

But im looking forward to round 2, i think its an excellent idea and will be very nicely keeping my motorsport juices flowing over the winter

No, it was the Lebanon car that rolled at paddock. The 3 letter code for Lebanon is LIB so that's where you might be getting confused.

Yet to see any coverage but from where I was standing it seemed pretty good. First race was precessional, I described it as high speed FRenault but the battle between Power and Piquet in the feature was good to watch.

Cars could do with being a bit quicker, they were only lapping 5 seconds faster than the 1980's spec F1 cars, certainly are loud though especially when they were changing gear at the bottom of paddock.

what's the difference between the sprint race and the feature one?

Different race lengths -- 75 km for the sprint, 160 km for the main race I think.

Possibly slightly different rules regarding pit stops (if there are any) etc too, but I can't comment on that as A1 isn't shown here.

motaworld where did you watch the races to?

yea was lebonon as someone has said that flipped no libya.

Also cars i think do need a little more speed such as another 50bhp with an extra 50bhp boost button giving 570 normal and 620 with the boost.

I watch the start of the sprint race from the top of Paddock Hill, in front of the grandstand then walked towards Druids. For the feature race I started at Clearways, then went to Stirlings and finally to Surtees. Where did you watch from?

Sprint race was an 18 lapper with no pitstops, feature was 38 laps long with a pitstop in the middle.