Full Throttle

France won both races in the A1 Grand Prix of Nations series in Portugal on Sunday to pull out a lead in championship points over Brazil. It was Team France’s fourth win in succession over the last two series stops.

Alexandre Premat of France led into the first corner in the sprint race, ahead of pole sitter Nelson Piquet Jr. of Brazil and Neel Jani of Switzerland. Behind them came Jos Verstappen of the Netherlands and Tomas Enge of the Czech Republic. At the back China, Australia and Mexico slid off the track.

The five leaders held those positions to the checked flag with Alvaro Parente of Portugal coming sixth in front of a very sparse home crowd.

In the feature race India stalled on the warm up lap, and then Brazil’s Piquet stalled at the start, impeding Verstappen of the Netherlands who was behind him.

France led Portugal and the Czech Republic into the first corner but the safety car had to be deployed as the Brazil car had to be pushed off the track.

On the restart the Indonesia car used its boost down the straight but arrived at the corner too fast and spun off, allowing the British car to pass South Africa, meanwhile Alvaro Parente in the Portugal car stalled in the pits losing time.

Out came the safety car again, at the restart Jos “The Boss” Verstappen ran into the back of the Germany car, which saw the Dutchman sent airborne and into the gravel trap.

With 17 laps to go France led Switzerland, USA, Ireland, Czech Republic, Australia, Great Britain and Canada with the safety car out once again. When it came in there was a charge for the first corner with France leading Switzerland and Ireland. Czech Republic was ahead of USA and then Canada spun off.

Once those disruptions were out of the way, Premat won comfortably from Switzerland’s Neel Jani for France’s fourth straight victory.

Behind Jani, ex-F1 racer Ralph Firman scored Ireland’s first podium with a battling third place despite starting a lowly starting position thanks to his 19th place in race one. Team USA with F1 Red Bull driver Scott Speed at the wheel scored his first championship points with a fourth place finish.

1 France 27mins 46.488secs
2 Brazil at 2.055secs
3 Switzerland at 3.289
4 Netherlands at 13.485
5 Czech Republic at 13.928
6 Portugal at 18.661
7 Canada at 21.297
8 Malaysia at 32.053
9 Indonesia at 37.367
10 South Africa at 39.722

1 France (Alexandre Premat) 1hr 01min 05.454secs
2 Switzerland (Neel Jani) 1:01:12.971
3 Ireland (Ralph Firman) 1:01:21.387
4 USA (Scott Speed) 1:01:24.477
5 Portugal (Alavaro Parente) 1:01:32.774
6 Australia (Will Davison) 1:01:40.228
7 Italy (Enrico Toccacelo) 1:01:41.083
8 Brazil (Nelson Piquet Jr.) 1:01:41.719
9 Czech Republic (Tomas Enge) 1:01:43.184
10 Austria (Mathias Lauda) 1:01:56.834

1 France 50pts
2 Brazil 42
3 Switzerland 34
4 New Zealand 29
5 Australia 21
6 Canada 18
7 Ireland 16
8 Mexico 16
9 Great Britain 15
10 Netherlands 15