The long awaited first round of the 1997/98 IAF1GPC season has begun. One of the new things in this season will be this little GP preview that is aimed to set the scene for the round. It will be a review, too, as we take a look back at what happened in the past. If you like this idea, you may want to praise Alan Strang for this piece of ASCII (and the 15 that are still to come), as *he* had the idea to post such a preview. If you don't like it, it's better to blame me as I decided that Alan's idea is a real good one :-)
Enough of the this meta-intro, now. The new season... with a two time world champion Oliver Roberts, eager to defend his title... A team boss Oliver Roberts, eager to win the constructors´ championship a second time... Veteran teams like Wild 13, Team Ecosse, Maverick and new teams that aim to make the whole season not that much of a success for Oliver and Digitech as it was last year.
But there´s not only Oliver at Digitech, Michal Janak is not much slower than Oliver, in fact he´s faster on some tracks. Then there´s the current HoF leader Alex Barnell, team mate of Ignacio Garcia Cuadrado at Curb Crawlers... what can be expected at least is that Alex will win valuable qualifying points that went to Oliver last year.
Last but not least: The Semi-Pro series has grown since it was established in 1996/97. It looks like there will be some interesting battles to be fought, so all what is required to get an exciting IC in 1997/98 is in place :-)
And now to the bit of history that will tell you about performances from and records set in the past...
| Fastest Pole time: | 1995/96 | 1:13.929 |
|---|---|---|
| Grant Reeve (Nightmare on Pit Lane) | ||
| Fastest Race time | 1996/97 | 1h49m10.669 |
| Oliver Roberts (Digitech) | ||
| Lap Record: | 1996/97 | 1:16.211 |
| Axel Bruns (Nameless Horror) | ||
| Podiums of the past: | 1994 | 1. Mathias Kegelmann (Universal Arrows) |
| 2. Martin Kift (Team Blitz) | ||
| 3. James Thomas (Williams Flymo) | ||
| 1995 | 1. Rob Buis (The Flying Dutchmen) | |
| 2. David Presle (SpeedBird) | ||
| 3. Cameron Ing (Simtek-Lada) | ||
| 1995/96 | 1. Oliver Roberts (Digitech) | |
| 2. Tero Savolainen (Ural Ravers) | ||
| 3. Grant Reeve (Nightmare on Pit Lane) | ||
| 1996/97 | 1. Oliver Roberts (Digitech) | |
| 2. Michal Janak (MAGIA-Chrysler) | ||
| 3. Reinhold Schatzer (RST Racing) | ||