Full Throttle

Brazil’s Nelson Piquet Jr. won the pole position for today’s inaugural A1 Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, finishing fastest in two of four qualifying sessions.

Piquet Jr., son of three-time Formula One champion Nelson Piquet, was almost half a second ahead of his nearest rival in a format in which times are calculated as a total of drivers’ two best laps.

Pole set, now all Piquet has to do is translate the P1 start to a race win. “I have been racing in Europe for a couple of years representing my country, Brazil but now it is great to be able to do it officially,” he said. “This is not Piquet driving, it is Brazil.”

New Zealand’s Matt Halliday was second fastest of the 25 drivers, who are in identical Lola-Zytek single-seat cars.

France went third fastest with Alex Premat at the wheel, whilst Team USA with Scott Speed had a bad time of qualifying, and will start the race way down in seventeenth place - quite some contrast from topping the timesheets earlier in the weekend.

The qualifying times are an aggregate from the best two flying laps from four runs to determine the starting order for the first, sprint race for the A1GP. Starting positions for second race of the day will be determined by finishing order of the sprint event.

1. Brazil 2min 30.789secs
2. New Zealand 2min 31.117secs
3. France 2min 31.206secs
4. Australia 2min 31.388secs
5. Great Britain 2min 31.714secs
6. Switzerland 2min 31.729secs
7. Mexico 2min 32.307secs
8. Pakistan 2min 32.596secs
9. Malaysia 2min 32.632secs
10. Japan 2min 32.689secs
11. Portugal 2min 32.705secs
12. Ireland 2min 32.811secs
13. Germany 2min 981secs
14. Netherlands 2min 33.075secs
15. South Africa 2min 33.086secs
16. Italy 2min 33.234secs
17. USA 2min 33.317secs
18. Indonesia 2min 33.424secs
19. India 2min 34.126secs
20. Czech Republic 2min 34.786secs
21. Canada 2min 36.656secs
22. Austria 2min 36.878secs
23. Lebanon 2min 37.104secs
24. China 2min 38.750secs
25. Russia 2min 41.303secs