Oliver Jarvis cemented Great Britain's billing as a pre-season title favourite by triumphing in the 45-lap A1GP feature race at Zandvoort, a flawlessly gritty performance enabling the Japanese F3 ace to see off sprint race winner South Africa for a convincing victory.
Indeed, for a nation that took so long to register its maiden A1GP success – 40 races – Britain has now won four of the last seven it has started, making it very much the team of the moment. Displaying the Scottish flag on the rear wing of the newly-liveried GB challenger in tribute to the late World Rally Championship legend
Colin McRae, Jarvis' was a popular success – and one that could just see the squad make it third time lucky in 2007/08.
As the lights went out for the rolling start, though, it was pole-sitter Zaugg who got the drop on Team Germany's Christian Vietoris, with Jarvis only just succeeding in holding off Neel Jani for third. Home favourite Jeroen Bleekemolen, meanwhile, was experiencing none of the good fortune he had enjoyed in race one as he got forced wide on the opening lap and fell back a handful of positions from his already lowly grid slot.
As the battle for second place hotted up, Zaugg once again began to pull clear as he had done in the earlier sprint outing. It looked like being a repeat performance, but Jarvis had other ideas and at the beginning of lap four darted bravely past Vietoris into the first corner. Shortly afterwards, Portugese newcomer Joao Urbano collided heavily with the barriers at the final turn after taking a bit too much kerb. Although his car momentarily blocked the pit-lane entrance, this did little to distract Jarvis who was on a charge, setting fastest lap on lap five to close to within just two tenths of a second of the leader.
![British A1GP star Oliver Jarvis celebrates victory in the feature race of the 2007/08 season-opener at Zandvoort [pic credit: A1GP Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/383614.jpg)
