A1 Team South Africa and A1 Team France are to continue a technical alliance into the third A1 Grand Prix season, kicking off next month at Zandvoort.

The teams joined forces at the beginning of last season, the partnership helping South Africa to their first win in the series at the Zandvoort opener, although 2005/2006 champions France by contrast failed to taste the winner's champagne.

The deal will involve engineering strategy and race car set-up, and was announced by Mike Carroll, General Manager of A1 Team South Africa.

”We are delighted to have renewed our alliance with A1 Team France,” he told the a1gp.com website. “This will allow us to keep a huge level of continuity, both in terms of our strategic partnership and the personnel actually working on South Africa's A1GP car.

”Our partnership with France was valuable last season, given the sharing of both engineering information and race car performance data, and we look forward to further strengthening this relationship this season.

”The fact that these very same individuals were involved in South Africa's first A1GP victory in September last year at Zandvoort should not be understated as South Africa was one of only eight nations to win an A1GP race last season.'

With A1GP attracting a myriad of nations ranging from those with plenty of motorsport experience to those with hardly any, alliances are popular up and down the grid. Indeed, South Africa gained plenty from switching to DAMS last season having started off with their GP2 rivals BCN.

Able to share telemetary and data, A1 Team France General Manager Eric Boullier is happy to have extended the partnership.

“We are very happy to have renewed our collaboration with A1 Team South Africa and we will actually reinforce it,” he said. 'Working with the team will be strong and efficient, with the only ambition being to win the World Cup of Motorsport.

”We built a very winning and positive co-operation last season, with one win at Zandvoort. We strongly believe that we have now reached the maturity for winning more races and fighting for overall victory.”