Known as the ‘World Cup of Motorsport’, A1GP began in 2005 / ’6 with a racecar based on a Lola B05/52 chassis, powered by a 3.4-litre Zytek V8, and clad in a stylised bodywork and aerodynamics package that led to it being dubbed, not altogether unkindly, ‘the Batmobile’.

It produced ferocious racing and partisan crowds wherever it travelled, which, in turn, attracted future F1, WEC and DTM drivers and engineers to the international one-make series. By the 2007 / ’8 season, it regularly delivered what F1 was lacking at the time – overtaking and spectacle.

After three seasons of events, in which nations rather than teams and drivers competed against each other the decision was made to build a brand new car. The reason for this sudden shift was led by an exciting offer from Ferrari as the new engine supplier. Coming off the back of the dominant Schumacher era in F1, and with a recently crowned champion in Raikkonen, nobody hid the fact this was largely a marketing exercise. The caché of Ferrari involvement brought undoubted value to the series and helped to promote Ferrari’s road car division.

The story of the genesis of the second generation A1GP car is fascinating. It is not simply another archetypal tale of how motorsport engineered a top-quality product in a very short timeframe. It’s the story of how an idea became a grid full of cars to F1 quality of the day in a matter of months, starting from scratch with no factory and no personnel.