Champ Car may get South Africa’s best driver
01/11/07 Stephan Simpson is from Cape Town and is South Africa's fastest driver. He is trying hard to land a ride with the Mi-Jack Conquest Champ Car team for 2007. Simpson beat all other South African drivers, including Adrian Zaugg who will be racing in GP2 next year, in a head-to-head A1GP recently in Silverstone.
After that his manager Robert Synge got him a test with Mi-Jack Conquest at MSR Houston with one very specific objective: "Beat Alexandre Premat's time!"
"Running the hard compound tires throughout the two days, I was not able to challenge Graham Rahal's recently set unofficial lap record but in the morning session of day two I was ready to give it a full go. The ChampCar is a physical car to drive and MSR is quite a technical and challenging circuit; all the braking and down-changing is done as you are turning into corners and counting down the seven speed sequential gearbox means some very quick counting! I did about 130 laps in all, with my fastest bettering Premat's time by 0.5 sec when we were both on the same compound tires. Mission accomplished!"
He hopes his speed earned him a chance to test with the Mi-Jack team at Sebring the week after next and, if all goes to plan, hopes to conclude his Champ Car plans in the USA the last week in January, this according to his website.