A1 USA

forzaminardi

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."

Max Revson stands corrected.

Max Revson

USA Qualifying Results
A1 Team/Driver/Aggregate Time
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

Despite a regulation which allows A1 Teams to switch drivers between Qualifying and the Sprint race, all teams have decided to retain their qualifying selection and there will be no driver changes. The Sprint race will be contested over 50 miles lasting up to 30 minutes in duration. With a rolling start at 13.30 PST (Malaysian Time 5.30am Monday), tomorrow’s race will be run over 22 laps of the 3.6 km circuit.

The outcome of the race determines the grid positions for the Feature race which will start at 15.00 PST (Malaysian Time 7.00am Monday) with a standing start. The Feature race will be run over 100 miles (44 laps) lasting up to 60 minutes in duration.

forzaminardi

ouch, no good race for the ex minardi boys so far. must be emmett who gave them too many mcsf goodies (which make their cars heavy now). alex is out already and jos and christian are trailing :(

Biker

Jos was pretty pissed off getting the first drivethrough-penalty. It was a shame because he drove pretty well in the final race.

vuurmuur

The A1 race director is fired for the wrongly applied penalty.

Selespeed

Luckely A1 was on American soil, there you just get fired. Imaging what could have happened to the race director if they drove in Bahrain...

viges

Some very good driving in the wet, which makes a nice change. Incredible save by Lapierre comes to mind on the way up to the corkscrew.

Ex-Minardi boys had one to forget. Alex was doing well until losing it on the corkscrew. Curse of the commentator got him.

This was also the location for a Fittipaldi/Verstappen tussle. Jos had a rather comical feature race summed up by regular visits to the pitlane and a double doughnut (unintentional).

Look forward to Quig and the good doctor with their eyewitness reports.

Stan

Wasn't the double doughnut during the sprint race?

viges

Maybe - he had one of those days, didn't he? Not all his fault.

Stan

Hey. Us Verstappen fans are used to it. You can already see it coming when he qualifies below the 8th position. Sometimes I wonder why they don't let Bleekemolen qualify. But that probably has to do with the setup.

Biker

Originally posted by Stan
Hey. Us Verstappen fans are used to it. You can already see it coming when he qualifies below the 8th position. Sometimes I wonder why they don't let Bleekemolen qualify. But that probably has to do with the setup.

The setup of Jos, you mean ? ;-)

Selespeed

Originally posted by Biker
[quote]Originally posted by Stan
Hey. Us Verstappen fans are used to it. You can already see it coming when he qualifies below the 8th position. Sometimes I wonder why they don't let Bleekemolen qualify. But that probably has to do with the setup.

The setup of Jos, you mean ? ;-) [/quote]

Jos' set-up is always on the edge.... ;-)

Dr_Spin

Yep, Jos' double donut was during the Sprint, which I was caught nicely on the TV, which I watched from the suite. It was pouring during that race so after seeing the grid off as the rain started I headed for cover and the company of the Yoong and Fittipaldi families.

Watched the Feature Event from the hill with Quig, Chuck and friends and got some shots of Alex's spin on the corkscrew.

There was some great racing and Alex battled his way up from last after his gravel trap in the Sprint (others were luckier to get out) and again after his spin on the screw.

Alex's qualifying was third fastest in Q4 and the fourth fastest lap of the weekend after Mexico and France.

A point for tenth in the Main Event was a slight consolation. Like others, some vibration and tyre problems didn't help.
All bloody good racing anyway.

I hope to post some pics tomorrow when I get the good ones sorted.

Spin