Crashes Galore in First Day of A1GP Official Practices

Alex Yoong at Brands on Friday (click image to enlarge)

As expected rookies are a big problem as Malaysia finished 5th of 25 nations (updated...)

Brands Hatch, U.K. - Friday, 23rd Sep 05 - The new A1 Grand Prix series kicked off with official practices at Brands Hatch today with Malaysia finishing fifth of 25 nations.

The new FIA sanctioned championship, billed as a World Cup of motorsport, pits nation against nation on the track, with a key feature being that nations entered MUST use their own nationals to man the offices in the cockpits.

However with 25 nations entered with some countries without much motorsports history to shout about simply cannot find national drivers with the adequate race experience at the top level to representing them.

The first ever official A1GP race weekend action today saw alot of carnage caused by rookie errors, causing the first official practice session to be red-flagged three times.

India's Karun Chandhok caused the most spectacular accident when he turned in on ex-Formula One driver Jos Verstappen at Druids hairpin. The two cars made contact, pitching Chandhok into the air and badly damaging his car. Chandhok had already allowed another Formula One refugee, Alex Yoong, to pass him but inexplicably failed to notice the bright orange Netherlands car of Verstappen, causing the pile-up.

China's drivers have struggled to match their more experienced rivals in testing clocking times completely out of the pace of the other teams. They were caught out again in practice today with their number one driver Qinghua Ma making a hash of things at the fast Paddock Hill bend and brought out the red flags once again.

Collisions are usually rare in practice, with drivers concentrating on finding the perfect set-up for their cars, but today's A1GP debut bucked that trend. Russian Alexey Vasilev caused yet another stoppage when he crashed into Ireland's Michael Devaney.

Despite promises of an equal playing field with even drivers from countries with little motorsport pedigree being able to compete, the timing sheets at the end of first practice told a different story. Scott Speed set the pace for the United States, setting a fastest lap of one minute 16.516 seconds.

Nelson Piquet Jr was six tenths of a second behind for Brazil while Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre took third. Britain's Robbie Kerr and Malaysian driver Alex Yoong also acquitted themselves well with fourth and fifth respectively only one second adrift.

At the rear end of the field, Russia was 6 seconds off the pace and China 10 seconds behind the leader despite having circulated the Brand's GP circuit 14 times and 15 times respectively.

[Others who encountered problems on Friday are: Tengyi Jiang (China), Ryo Fukuda (Japan) and Jan Charouz (Czech), Nikolay Fomenko (Russia), Adrian Sutil (Germany) and Christian Jones (Australia) all either spun off or shunted.]

The saving grace is at the front the competition this weekend - with the top 12 nations seperated by less than 2 seconds - the competition is going to very intense.

Brands Hatch Official Practice Session 1
(Friday, 23rd Sep - Dry track)
Pos/A1 Team/Driver/Time/No. Laps
1. USA Scott Speed 1m16.516 19
2. Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr. 1m17.156 13
3. France Nicholas Lapierre 1m17.216 20
4. Great Britain Robbie Kerr 1m17.463 21
5. Malaysia Alex Yoong 1m17.579 17
6. Australia Will Power 1m17.673 30
7. Switzerland Neel Jani 1m17.731 22
8. Portugal Alvaro Parente 1m17.740 19
9. Netherlands Jos Verstappen 1m17.970 20
10. Mexico Salvador Duran 1m17.997 27
11. New Zealand Matt Halliday 1m18.157 24
12. Germany Timo Scheider 1m18.344 13
13. Canada Sean MacIntosh 1m18.470 28
14. South Africa Stephen Simpson 1m18.640 21
15. Japan Ryo Fukuda 1m18.859 27
16. Pakistan Adam Khan 1m18.932 14
17. Czech Republic Jan Charouz 1m19.396 20
18. Lebanon Basil Shaaban 1m19.491 24
19. Ireland Michael Devaney 1m19.542 16
20. Austria Mathias Lauda 1m19.674 14
21. Indonesia Ananda Mikola 1m20.126 16
22. Russia Alexey Vasiliev 1m22.905 14
23. Italy Enrico Toccacelo 1m25.320 5
24. China Quinghua Ma 1m26.555 15
25. India Karun Chandhok 1m28.607 2