KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand A1GP team could not have picked a better prospect than Wanganui driver Earl Bamber for this weekend's first round of the World Cup of Motorsport in the Netherlands.
Bamber, 18, is ranked with the best in the world's future stars category on respected motor racing website, driverdb.com
In a list covering drivers aged 21 or under from known statistics, Bamber is the top Kiwi, with 27 wins from 103 races. Overall he is ranked fifth.
With a winning percentage of 26.21 per cent, he would move up two places to take third place from Toro Rosso Formula One star Sebastien Vettel, who has a strike rate of 25.64 per cent (30/117).
Vettel, from Germany, recently became the youngest driver to win a Formula One race when he took the chequered flag at the Italian grand prix.
American Carl Skerlong (31 wins from 63 races) leads the list followed by German Nicolas Hulkenberg (30/100), Vettel, Latvian Harald Schlegelmich (30/133) and Bamber.
Hulkenberg steered the German team to victory in the 2006/07 World Cup of Motorsport.
Next best New Zealander is Toro Rosso junior squad star Brendon Hartley (11th, 20/129), from Palmerston North.
Bamber arrives at the Zandvoort circuit in good form, having taken two third placings on debut and a win in the last two rounds of the European Formula Master series.
He got this weekend's drive in Black Beauty after impressing team owner Colin Giltrap in testing at last week.
Giltrap's first choice, Chris van der Drift, who leads the Formula Master standings, is unavailable because the final round of this championship is also this weekend at Monza, Italy.
In lining Black Beauty up, Bamber becomes just the third race driver in four seasons for the New Zealand team following Matt Halliday and Jonny Reid, the latter piloting New Zealand to second in the series over the past two seasons.
"I'm really excited to be racing for A1 Team New Zealand. It's a huge honour to represent my country, especially as I've been selected to open the season for the team," Bamber said.
Giltrap said Bamber's promotion was deserved.
"Earl did a great job for the team in testing so we're happy to reward him with the race seat for Zandvoort."
This year's series will feature new cars powered by Ferrari engines that Bamber has fallen in love with.
With 600 horsepower, the engine is a considerable step forward in performance terms from the previous A1GP racer.
Improvements over the previous race car include a more stable chassis design and state of the art carbon ceramic brakes.
"It's a beautiful car...it can pull 4Gs around a fast corner.
"Compared with the previous A1 GP car, it has more torque and the power boost button is impressive," he said testing at Snetterton, England, in which he lapped faster than the official A1 test car last week.
Bamber, who won the Asian Formula BMW series at age 15, has been spending a lot of time in the gym to prepare himself.
"Zandvoort has some very fast corners and is a very physical track with a lot of bumps," he said.
Action gets underway on Saturday with practise and qualifying with Sunday seeing a 24-minute Sprint Race in the morning, and a longer Feature Race in the afternoon.
Under this season's rules, the worst scoring round (Sprint and Feature races combined) of each team will be dropped in the final calculations of the points standings.
- NZPA
