A1GP: Malaysia 10th In Wet, Wet, Wet Portugal

Wet, wet, wet...

that about sums up the 4 sessions of Friday practices.

Lisbon, Portugal - 21 October 05 - Despite atrocious weather conditions affected the first day’s running of the A1 Grand Prix of Nations at the Circuito Estoril near Lisbon, Malaysia's Fairuz Fauzy managed a top-ten in the third session of four on a still damp but drying track.

There's not much to say about the other three sessions as the track was either wet or practically drenched and teams were clocking some 20 seconds per lap slower. All drivers clocked their fastest time in the third practice session which was actually the first official practice session. The first two sessions were additional practices inserted for just Portugal.

France who won both races in Germany continued with it's good pace to top the day's time sheets but with Alexandre Premat on this occasion. Germany who for the first time this season, have Adrian Sutil as their race driver finished second with ex-Formula One steerer third.

With teams mostly concentrating on wet set-up work and only teams who went out on new tyres in the driest segment of session three there are more to come from the teams who have lagged behind on day 1.

Expect Ireland's Ralph Firman who finished 11th for the day, Canada's Sean McIntosh (14th), USA's Scott Speed (17th) and New Zealand's Matt Halliday (19th) to want to have a say at the front on Saturday. Malaysia's Fairuz would also like to maintain a top 10 position in Saturday's final practice before qualifying.

The Malaysian team turned up with all members wearing black armbands as a sign of respect for the passing of the country's Prime Minister's wife Endon Mahmood on Thursday morning.
Max Revson

A1 Team/Driver/Time/No. Laps

1 France Alexandre Premat 1.33.024 14

2 Germany Adrian Sutil 1.33.700 17

3 Czech Rep. Tomas Enge 1.33.734 19

4 Australia Will Davison 1.34.065 16

5 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 1.34.085 16

6 Portugal Alvaro Parente 1.34.699 16

7 G. Britain Robbie Kerr 1.35.283 17

8 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 1.35.302 15

9 Switzerland Neel Jani 1.35.590 15

10 Malaysia Fairuz Fauzy 1.35.915 15

11 Ireland Ralph Firman 1.35.992 10

12 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 1.36.055 16

13 Russia Alexander Turumin 1.36.367 20

14 Canada Sean McIntosh 1.36.374 12

15 Austria Mathias Lauda 1.36.482 21

16 S. Africa Tomas Scheckter 1.36.777 17

17 USA Scott Speed 1.37.534 11

18 Pakistan Adam Khan 1.38.978 7

19 N. Zealand Matt Halliday 1.39.361 17

20 Lebanon Basil Shaaban 1.41.157 16

21 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 1.44.914 10

22 India Armaan Ebrahim 1.45.263 23

23 China Tengji Jiang 1.45.388 8

24 Mexico Salvador Duran 1.45.400 12

25 Japan d.n.s.