Friday 18 January 2008 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, Round 5 - Taupo, New Zealand
The sun blazed down on the Taupo circuit in New Zealand today as A1 Team Brasil hit the track for the first time of the weekend for round five of the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. For the first time this season the team utilised two drivers as it welcomed new rookie Clemente Faria Jr to join nominated race driver Sergio Jimenez.
Clemente got his first taste of an A1GP weekend today as he went out in this morning’s rookie practice session. In the first 25-minute segment Clemente focused on learning the Taupo circuit and re-acquainting himself with the car, which he last drove at the pre-season driver shoot-out at Snetterton in the UK last August. He shifted his focus for the second segment to gather data for the team before handing over the reins to Sergio for the afternoon’s one-hour practice.
Taupo was another new circuit for Sergio as he hit the track this afternoon. As he is no longer eligible for the rookie practice sessions, the first aim of the afternoon was to get to grips with the technical 3.5km circuit. After that he began working with the team to begin to find a good set-up for the car, and focus soon turned to finding a solution for the bumpy nature of the track.
Although good progress was made throughout the hour, Sergio and the engineers will be looking to improve further in time for tomorrow’s final one-hour practice session, before the afternoon’s qualifying.
Clemente Faria Jr: "The track is very technical and I really enjoyed it. The sessions are not too long so I didn’t have a lot of time to see the data and try to improve on my times. The car was good but I did not go to the limit so there is more to come. A lot of things are new to me but I just need to build my experience and I know we can improve in Australia because I will be more used to the car."
Sergio Jimenez: "It hasn’t been bad today. I have been surprised by the circuit because it looked quite easy, but I have found a very tricky, bumpy track. The car was very nervous to begin with this afternoon and that made it difficult to drive. We changed a lot and the car kept improving during the session. We had some good sector times but didn’t get a clean lap to put it all together; if we put our best splits together we would have done very well. So it wasn’t a bad day but we still need to make improvements for tomorrow."
Emerson Fittipaldi: "Clemente did a good job this morning, he just needs to get adapt to the car because it’s not easy to drive. This afternoon Sergio kept improving and did a very good job considering it is his first time here. He did some fast sectors but we didn’t get one clean lap so tomorrow we should be running closer to the top, I think in the top six."
Practice Summary
Brasil - Free Practice 1a (Clemente Faria Jr)
Laps: 15 Position: 16th Fastest Lap: 1:21.029 (+3.715)
Brasil - Free Practice 1b (Clemente Faria Jr)
Laps: 16 Position: 14th Fastest Lap: 1:19.010 (+1.940)
Brasil - Free Practice 2 (Sergio Jimenez)
Laps: 28 Position: 13th Fastest Lap: 1:16.553 (+1.008)
- Rebecca Banks - photos A1GP
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