Formula Junior was invited to be the featured display of historic racing cars at this most prestigious modern racing event and some dozen Formula Juniors, plus one Formula 3 500 were presented over the 3 days of the meeting.

The A1GP is run as a world cup series of events with national teams competing in exactly similar cars around the globe. Each round is filled with A1GP cars track racing on three days, interspersed by a very few select support races. The racing is fast, furious and very loud with engines revving to 19k rpm from 30+ cars competing.
Quite different from the sometimes processional & dull Formula One these days.

For the final round at Brands Hatch the A1GP organisers this year developed a new initiative called “The A1GP Global Village” designed to offer some diversions and attractions to the many thousands of spectators.
Our invitation to form the inaugural historic racing car display came about by a lucky chance involving some FJ Cooper research for a period driver and his son last year. Unbeknown to your scribe at the time, the son turned out to be one of the A1 organisers who made a telephone call a few months ago and it all grew from there.

Our display location was exceptionally fine, just inside the main entrance and with a frontage of some 20 metres along one side of the pedestrian route meant that literally thousands of people viewed our cars.
Many visitors were clearly fascinated by our cars, countless photographs were taken and many questions asked by people who clearly had only previously taken an interest in modern racing but went away with an FJ Calendar and a Newsletter.

The A1GP organisers were very impressed with the quality of our cars and with the effort put in by all concerned, so maybe we will be invited again next year.

Many thanks to Alex Morton (Ausper & Lightning), Brian Edwards (Gemini Mk2),
Brian Mitcham (Wainer), David Crowther (Lotus 22), Julian Reichman (Cooper 500 Mk6), Paul Davis (Lotus 20), Ron Welsh (Fairthorpe), Jeremy Deeley (Cooper T52),
Tim Bishop (Sauter & Essenkay), Ian Robinson (Autosud).

                           Peter Jackson, The Cooper Cockpit Correspondent, 12th May 2008

Photo's by Michael Hedger