A1GP: Fairuz Qualifies Malaysia in Eight

Fairuz in Portugal qualifying Malaysian car with black banded nose...(click image to enlarge)

Alex: "Fairuz is driving well this weekend..."

Fairuz Fauzy continued its strong performance for A1 Team Malaysia this weekend by qualifying eight and will start on the fourth row for the Sprint race tomorrow.

With qualifying run in the dry, Fairuz was on the pace from the start and has maintained his competitive performance throughout each session. Eleventh fastest for the first run, Fairuz put new tyres on for the second and bettered his time; he went back out for the third run and then put another new set of tyres on for his final run, which resulted in him using his new tyre runs for the aggregated qualifying time that put him eighth fastest overall.

Fairuz commented, “I’m happy with the car and the team has done a good job. We changed a few things for qualifying and these improved the car. We had four good runs. We know we have a good wet set up and we just need to work on the dry setup a little more, then we will be ready for tomorrow.”

Teammate Alex Yoong watched compatriot Fairuz out on track and added, “Fairuz is driving well for A1 Team Malaysia this weekend and it’s good for us to be starting in the top ten. When you’re a driver you just want to be in the car yourself, but it’s great to see Fairuz flying, and flying the flag for Malaysia.”

Jack Cunningham, Team Principal, summed up the weekend so far saying, “It’s been a weekend in which we have all been saddened by the news of the passing of Datin Seri Endon which has naturally focused our attention back into Malaysia. Against that backdrop Fairuz has continued to perform well for A1 Team Malaysia today - we’re very pleased with his pace in qualifying. He’s got to grips with this circuit in both wet and dry conditions. With a little bit of luck this qualifying performance should deliver us a good result tomorrow.”

A1 Team Brazil took its second Sprint race podium top-spot of the A1 Grand Prix series with Nelson Piquet Jr recording the fastest aggregate time in qualifying despite spinning off in the first of the four sessions. Switzerland turned in it's best ever qualifying to share front row with Brazil and the Germany round's double winner, France, qualified third.

Telecast notes: The races for Portugal will be shown live over StarSports on Sunday evening at 8.30pm MST (Sprint race) and 10.00pm MST (Feature race) while 8TV will carry delayed telecasts a few hours later. For programme schedule go to StarSports and 8TV.
Max Revson

Portugal, Estoril Rd.3 Qualifying Results
Team/Driver/Aggregate/Time

1 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 3.01.316

2 Switzerland Neel Jani 3.01.830;

3 France Alexandre Premat 3.02.550

4 Czech Rep Tomas Enge 3.02.948

5 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 3.03.210

6 Portugal Alvaro Parente 3.03.301

7 Canada Sean McIntosh 3.03.367

8 Malaysia Fairuz Fauzy 3.03.467

9 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 3.04.001

10 G Britain Robbie Kerr 3.04.164

11 Germany Adrian Sutil 3.04.181

12 Mexico Salvador Duran 3.04.447

13 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 3.04.716

14 New Zealand Matt Halliday 3.04.909

15 USA Scott Speed 3.05.024

16 S Africa Tomas Scheckter 3.05.518

17 Russia Mikhail Aleshin 3.06.287

18 Ireland Ralph Firman 3.07.289

19 Australia Will Davison 3.07.327

20 China Tengyi Jiang 3.07.543

21 Pakistan Adam Khan 3.08.976

22 Austria Mathias Lauda 3.09.743

23 Lebanon Basil Shaaban 3.10.318

24 India Armaan Ebrahim 3.10.949

- Japan did not start