Sky Sports.com

Georgie: backing Team GBR

Team GBR expectations are massive this season. Anything but the title will be a disappointment. They've got everything in place, they've got the team in place and no other team has both drivers who are former race winners.

Georgie Thompson
Quotes of the week

See the first A1GP race of the season live from Zandvoort, Holland
Qualifying

2.30pm, Saturday, Sky Sports Xtra

Race Day

1.00pm, Sunday, Sky Sports Xtra

Also see

• A1GP season preview
• Wattie: It's going to be awesome

A1GP is back for a third season and as ever, Sky Sportsis the place to watch the drama unfold... live.

We caught up with Georgie on the eve of the new season to find her as excited as ever... not just about Team Great Britain's chances of becoming the third A1GP champions.

SKYSPORTS.COM: So Georgie, it's the third season of A1GP. What can we expect over the next eight months?

GEORGIE THOMPSON: It is going to be bigger and better than ever! Tony Teixeira is now the main man and he is really, really committed to the cause. There has been plenty of top-level investment and the whole set-up seems to have a new lease of life. And it is going to be an awful lot closer than we've seen in the previous two seasons. Season one was dominated by Team France, season two well and truly dominated by Team Germany. Hopefully this season it will be dominated by Team GBR!

SS.COM: 'Dominated'? They all use the same cars and the same specifications... A1GP is supposed to be a level playing field

GT: It is a level playing field, but it just goes to show what teams and drivers can achieve when they work really well together. That's the key to success in A1GP, a close-nit group of mechanics, engineers, drivers - the whole team has to pull together.

SS.COM: Which teams do you see pulling together the best? It's being billed as anyone's title.

GT: The Germans are the defending champions, but Nico Hülkenberg, the champion driver, last year is not in it this time. Replacing him is a rookie driver called Christian Vietoris, who is a very, very raw talent. He is only 18 and already he's being singled out for greatness and already there are signs that he could step into Hülkenberg's shoes very, very capably. But it really is there for the taking this time.

SS.COM: Give us some names to look out for...

GT: India have got this great driver Narain Karthikeyan, who is pretty well-known on the world circuit in motorsport, so they've received a major boost there. Pakistan have a huge boost with Adam Khan back for them, Ralph Firman is racing again for Team Ireland, so we've got some really pretty good people hanging around the action. Also the rookie driver for Team France is a guy called Nicolas Prost - and he's Alain Prost's son.

SS.COM: OK, so what about Team GBR. Will it be a case of third time lucky?

GT: Expectations are massive this season. Anything but the title will be a disappointment. They've got everything in place, they've got the team in place and no other team has both drivers who are former race winners. No-one has left the team either, everyone has stayed on. So they've got the driving capability, the team capability and now it's just a case of putting them all together.

SS.COM: Robbie Kerr and Oliver Jarvis are the two men behind the wheel. How does that work?

GT: This season it's going to be very much a shared drive. Last season it was very much dominated by Robbie Kerr and Ollie Jarvis came in for a couple of races. He won in Mexico as well, so he has proved beyond doubt he can do it. It's just what France did in the first season with Alexandre Prémat and Nicolas Lapierre: they were able to share all their data and it worked beautifully. Also it's bound to inspire you as a driver. You have to perform every weekend, because you don't know if you've got the next drive.

SS.COM: Sounds too good to be true. Can it not backfire though

GT: I know what you're getting at, but hopefully it won't become a Lewis Hamilton-Fernando Alonso scenario and by the time we get to Brands, they will still be talking!

SS.COM: There are also some major changes to the format. What's new this season?

GT: Qualifying will be very different. Previously they used to take a combination of results to ascertain the Sprint Race line-up. Now what has happened is they've divided the qualification into two parts. Section one and section two will determine the Sprint Race grid - just the fastest time from either section. And section three and four will determine the Feature Race grid. So after qualifying we will know exactly who lines up where in each race.

SS.COM: What about the races themselves?

GT: In the Sprint Race they've added points to the mix. Beforehand it became quite formulaic because everyone wanted to protect their cars for the feature race which was the big-money race, and just protect their positions on the grid. That won't happen any more - everyone's going for broke as well as the feature. They've also changed the scoring system so now the top 10 all get points. Now the Sprint Race has that added bonus it is going to be much more exciting, much more dramatic. Even though the prize money is important in the feature race, the teams will really be going for it. The lesser-known teams have been given a real chance here and that's what it's all about.

SS.COM: And the Feature Race?

GT: In the Feature Race they have added an extra pit stop: now there are two mandatory tyre changes. We don't quite now how that's going to manifest itself, so it will be quite interesting to see what happens at Zandvoort.

SS.COM: A1GP already has some exotic locations to its name. Any new venues to watch out for?

GT: There's a new race in China in December, Zhuhai which replaces the Beijing street circuit, a much better track and circuit. There's still all the old favourites like the street circuit in Durban, Sepang in Malaysia and Sydney, but it all culminates in a fantastic finale at Brands Hatch in May.

SS.COM: And what can we expect from Sky Sports coverage this time around?

GT: We are trying to build the profiles of the drivers more this season. It is still nation against nation but I think people need to identify with the individual characters, so we will be running a ticker across the bottom full of information and basically just giving the guys behind the wheel a higher profile. What we're also doing is running a competition every week for a whole array of Team GBR prizes. Then every winner from each race weekend will go into a prize draw and the winner of that will get to come along to Brands as exclusive guests of Team GBR. And they might even get to meet us in the Sky Sports studio!

SS.COM: And who can we expect to see alongside you at race weekend?GT: Andy Priaulx, gunning for another World Touring Car championship, will be back in the studio with me. Tony Jardine will also be alongside me for most of the season, while there will also be guest appearances from Darren Manning, who was with Team GBR last season but now races in IndyCar. There will also be a few surprise guests as the season goes on, but I can't give them away!

SS.COM: It's been two years now and they still haven't let you loose behind the wheel. Any closer to that dream drive?

GT: Sadly, no! But this season, they're going to train me as an A1GP driver would train. They're going to put me into loads of different scenarios and tests so I get to the stage where I am capable of driving an A1GP car. It's really just to see what drivers have to go through, because nobody can just jump into one of these and drive round at 200mph, they're such high-performance cars. It's going to be very, very hard. At first I thought it was a good idea, now I'm beginning to think it might be slightly dangerous and even a little bit silly...