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Q&A: Alan Jones - EXCLUSIVE

We've had a pathetic season! We started off with another driver, but John really impressed us as a rookie. He on more than one occasion proved to be the quickest rookie in the rookie sessions, up against some pretty talented people, but since then for one reason or another he just hasn't been able to put it together.

Q:
And like the weather in the end at Brands, it's been a bit of a damp squib climax to the campaign, hasn't it?

AJ:
Yeah; I obviously predicted Switzerland was going to win the championship, but it would have been really nice for Great Britain to have taken the event. He [Robbie Kerr] won the sprint race, but for them to have won the feature as well would have been a great finish to the season, particularly for England on home soil.

Q:
A1GP hasn't traditionally been part of the upcoming part of a driver's career like the stable Formula Renault, Formula Ford, Formula 3 categories… How good a training ground do you believe it is for young drivers?

AJ:
Well Formula Renault, Formula 3 and all the rest of them have been around slightly longer than A1GP, so give us time! Formula 1 has been here for 50 years – we haven't been here for 50 months, but already we've seen [Nico] Hülkenberg go out of here to become a Williams test-driver, and Neel Jani has done a great job.

On the other side of the coin we've actually seen a lot of so-called respectful names, big names or people who have achieved things come into A1GP and really have their eyebrows lifted a little bit. These things aren't easy cars to drive, and there have been certain people who have come into A1GP who people have thought 'well he'll just dominate, he'll romp home' and quite the contrary – they've had a bit of a hiding. I think that's been good for the other people in A1GP to have beaten some of these people that have come in with big names.

Q:
And looking finally to the future, there are Ferrari engines coming along for next season – is it onwards and upwards from here for A1GP?

AJ:
I think so. I happen to know for a fact that they've had a lot more enquiries from other nations – both to either host races or field teams, and now we'll have the Ferrari engines and more horsepower too. These cars are only going to have something like ten or 20 horsepower less than a Formula 1 car with no electronic aids – I think they're going to be a real drivers' car.

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