2006 A1 GRAND PRIX

A1 GP (2005/2006)

REPORT

QUALIFYING

• 1 Mexico Salvador Duran 2.30.744
  2 France Nicolas Lapierre 2.30.895
  3 New Zealand Matt Halliday 2.31.596
  4 Malaysia Alex Yoong 2.31.810
  5 Australia Ryan Briscoe 2.31.964
  6 Great Britain Robbie Kerr 2.31.970
  7 Portugal Alvaro Parente 2.32.042
  8 Ireland Ralph Firman 2.32.098
  9 Germany Timo Scheider 2.32.307
  10 S. Africa Stephen Simpson 2.32.535
  11 Lebanon Graham Rahal 2.32.560
  12 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 2.32.571
  13 Italy Max Papis 2.32.745
  14 Czech Republic Tomas Enge 2.32.838
  15 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 2.33.249
  16 Switzerland Giorgio Mondini 2.33.299
  17 USA Bryan Herta 2.33.602
  18 Canada Patrick Carpentier 2.33.641
  19 Brazil Christian Fittipaldi 2.33.686
  20 Austria Mathias Lauda 2.34.338
  21 Pakistan Adam Khan 2.36.325
  22 China Tengyi Jiang 2.37.715

TEAM FRANCE QUALIFYING REPORT

• A1 Team France conquers first row in Laguna Seca
• Laguna Seca, California/USA; Saturday, 11 March 2006 -- A1 Team France will start tomorrow's Sprint Race in Laguna Seca from the front row of the grid. After a very competitive and exciting session in very cold conditions, Nicolas Lapierre's aggregate time of 2:30.895 minutes was good enough for second place on the grid, just behind Mexico. Thus, France will start for the seventh time out of ten events from the front row.
• Lapierre was fastest in the first (1:16.202 minutes) and in the third outing (1:15.384 minutes), Mexico did the fastest time in the second and in the last of the four qualifying rounds. It was a close battle between France and Mexico that went right down to the wire and was decided only in the ultimate last corner: Lapierre made a slight mistake, came sideways and lost the 1.5 tenths of a second that brought him into 2nd place on the grid.
• Nicolas Lapierre said: "My mistake in the last corner obviously costed me pole position. I was all time in front and I had the car to do the pole. But at the end we are here to win the championship. We are in front of Switzerland and that was our main objective. On the other hand I am a racer and I want to win whenever the flag drops. So I promise, tomorrow I will set A1 Team Mexico under pressure."

TEAM MALAYSIA QUALIFYING REPORT

• A1 Team Malaysia achieved its best ever qualifying position today with 4th at the USA A1 Grand Prix in Laguna Seca Speedway near San Francisco today (Saturday).

  Malaysia's Alex Yoong firmly attributed this success solely on the great teamwork which enabled a much improved setup to the car compared to the two practice sessions yesterday and this morning, saying, "The whole team collective have worked hard over the last two days to steadily improve the car's setup and a great improvement was found from the second practice session this morning to put us in this good position to score more points in the run-in to the championship."

  "I'm very happy with this qualifying result but credit goes to the whole team." Yoong added.

  Malaysia will line up alongside New Zealand on the second row with Mexico, who won its maiden pole position, and France on the front row.

  Meanwhile A1 Team Malaysia has strongly refuted that pit-stop efforts have hampered better results for the team. The team's principal, Jack Cunningham and Yoong have both defended the team's pit-stop performance. "The crew cannot be blamed as the thread design on the wheel nut is not designed for tyre changing under high temperature in race condition." said Cunningham.

  Yoong said that the other top running teams also had similar problems and added, "The team did very well in the pit-stops in Indonesia and Malaysia and were not the slowest in the last few races. Overall I'm happy with the crew's performance under these very arduous conditions."
  

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