Alex Wurz has reinvented himself as a pioneer of road safety, rather like Michael Schumacher. The difference is that Wurz has set up a company called Test and Training International, to set up road safety training centres and he has been commissioned by the Egyptian government to build a massive new site new Cairo.
Wurz was Honda’s test driver until their withdrawal last winter. The position of test driver is unclear at Brawn. Wurz has been coming along to Grands Prix this season, hanging out at Brawn, but not wearing team kit.
Wurz’s F1 racing career came to an end in 2007 with Williams. He was their test driver before that and fulfilled a similar role at McLaren before that. It’s always good to see racing drivers using some intelligence to think of their next move, like Jonathan Palmer’s move into driving days.
The statement from Test and Training about the Cairo deal reads as follows,
“The Egyptian Training Centre of Excellence will be the biggest of its kind in the world. It will be built in South East Cairo and over an area of 33 hectares and will be designed to the latest standard of Test&Training International criteria. It will be a multi-functional safety training facility with the ability to offer tailored programmes for cars, buses, trucks and motorcycles, as well as educational safety instruction for all age groups including children and young adults. It will include an off-road track and specialised tunnel training.
” Construction is anticipated to start in Autumn 2009 and The Egyptian Training Centre of Excellence should be operational by mid 2010.”
Wishing him good luck with that.
As an Egyptian, this is brilliant news. What a fantastic guy. Working with any government – and in particular, the Egyptian government – is never easy, but if anyone can do it, Alex can. Glad the goverment are finally taking this seriously and I’m sure Alex will save countless lives. Wishing him the best.
Having heard Alex talking about this when he visited brussels to spread the word of his efforts to politicians, I have to say this is a really interesting business and is doing really good things.
Good luck to Alex, indeed! He was always one of my favorite drivers. He’s incredibly personable off-track, and equally talented on it (especially when it came to development work, it seems). It’s a shame to see him underutilized at Brawn currently, but good to hear things are going well for him elsewhere.
Good for Alex, he always has appeared as one of the most insightive drivers to me, and am sure this will be a great success for him!
Whether he or Anthony Davidson is the third driver, who knows! If Brawn GP were running the KERS system, then for sure Ant is the man you would want in the car, very fast and a smaller driver which would work out nicely weight wise.
Good old Alex Wurz. Nice to see him using is mountains of talent and massive intellect for Safety.
Well done to Mr Wurz I think his driving schools and the publicity he brings to ongoing driving training is fantastic and should make a very positive contribution to road safety.