A1GP: Sepang and the sound of silence

The graphic on the A1 Team Malaysia website tells the story, well, graphically.

"Next race," it says, "Days: 0, Hours: 0, Minutes: 0, Seconds: 0."

The team's nome race was to have been yesterday. But the third race in the planned season went the same way as that supposed to have been held in Australia's Gold Coast and China.

Team Austalia's website is even more cynical: it says it's 161 days to the next race. Team Aus is seriously hacked off: it got screwed in every direction. Teed up for its home race, Australia prepared a pile of special clothing to sell at the Surfers' Paradise event. They turned up but no one else from A1GP did, despite the grandstanding by the organisers who even went so far as to say they had personally watched kit being loaded onto planes: sources in Aus say that if that was true, it must have been hijacked on the way as nothing arrived at the track.

The Surfers' organisers told Team Aus that no race meant no benefits - and that meant they couldn't sell their clothing.

Frustrated, the team has given it all to the Make A Wish foundation and invited them to get what they can for it.

And it's not just the stuff they would have sold in Australia: the entire collection has been given away with the agreement of team sponsor Victory Clothing.

A1 Team New Zealand - whose website churns out funk-rock standard Black Betty - has perhaps the most professional website in the series. But it holds no news of 2010.

China, which was supposed to host a race in mid November, also has a countdown on its site. It has stopped at last year's Algarve event. Prescient or what?

The AI GP website itself has no news since the week before the aborted Surfers' weekend. And its previously fanatical press team has been silent for weeks. Its website is still advertising tickets for the Brands Hatch race - in May 2009.

The USA, which was perhaps the series most improved team in 2009 finishing fifth after several series that didn't even qualify as lacklustre has also simply surrendered to silence.

Don't think this is a gloat: it's not. A1GP brought top class single seat racing to the masses at an affordable price - a day at Brands Hatch last year, in a seat on the main straight, cost just GBP12. A whole weekend walkabout ticket was just GBP35. The series brought great racing in real racing cars to an audience that will never, ever be able to afford to attend a Formula One race.

And it did so in a fun, friendly way with events that were almost village fete-like. It was the perfect introduction to racing for youngsters - and their race-struck fathers (and some mothers) too.

For those of us who don't much care for the politics, don't even much care about the tribalism of teams, who care more about the racing itself, the loss of A1GP is a much greater loss than BMW, Toyota or Honda from Formula One.

The failure of A1GP has a much more fundamental impact on the sport of motor racing than any of those events.

Whatever its detractors say, this is one racing fan who is very sorry to see it fail.

And from where I sit, just down the road from Sepang, the lack of any overt concern in town that the race did not happen is simply saddening.