Premat to Race in Estoril
Alexandre Premat will race for A1 Team France in the next two A1 Grand Prix races at Estoril, despite teammate Nicolas Lapierre's dominance of the last weekend's round at the EuroSpeedway
Lapierre moved the French squad into second position in the World Cup of Motorsport after securing pole position and winning both races on the oval's road course, but team principal Jean-Paul Driot will stick to the policy of alternating drivers between events.
The team started the season with Premat for the two Brands Hatch races, where he finished runner-up to Nelson Piquet Jr in the sprint race before battery failure left him on the grid for the feature race. Lapierre then dominated both Lausitz races, prompting speculation that he will be in the car at Estoril.
However, Lapierre will race for the team at the fourth round of the Championship at Eastern Creek, Australia.
Driot told Autosport-Atlas: "I'm not going to change my position just because Nicolas won at Lausitz. That does nothing to change my point of view.
"I'm sticking to what I agreed on at the start of the season, and we will continue with this until something changes to decide otherwise. Alex did a great job at Brands Hatch and was only let down by a mechanical failure. Nicolas will be back in the car for Eastern Creek."
The team will continue to bring both drivers to the meeting, however, and could yet look into the possibility of running them both over the weekend.
"It would be stupid not to bring both drivers to the races," Driot added. "If something happens to one driver you then can't race. But the qualification system rewards consistency and having one driver in the car. Scott Speed was only 0.056 seconds behind us on aggregate last weekend."
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