A1 Team India Qualifies 5th for the Sprint Race 22.02.2009: A1 Team India returned to South Africa for the fifth round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. The last three seasons, A1GP has raced on the streets of Durban, but this year the championship makes its debut at the home of South African motorsport, The Ky

A1 Team India returned to South Africa for the fifth round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. The last three seasons, A1GP has raced on the streets of Durban, but this year the championship makes its debut at the home of South African motorsport, The Kyalami Circuit.

The Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit is located in Gauteng province, just north of Johannesburg and has a rich history of international motorsport events on four and two wheels. The balanced blend of slow, medium and fast corners and the fact Kyalami is nearly 2,000 metres above sea level will present a challenge to both the race drivers and engineers at this weekend’s event.

In the morning practice session, Narain finished 13th quickest. However, his laps were set on old tyres, and comparing them to other teams ‘old tyre’ laps, A1 Team India were very competitive. The team had made significant changes to the setup of the car overnight, & the changes had proved very positive.

The Sprint qualifying was very competitive and so was Narain. He put together an excellent flying lap during the second qualifying segment, finishing 5th quickest.

The Feature race qualifying was not so successful for A1 Team India. During the first segment of qualifying, Narain used a set of old tyres, saving his last set for the second segment. Unfortunately, A1 Team Brazil had a big shunt during the dying minutes of qualifying causing the session to be stopped for safety reasons.

At that time, Narain, along with many other drivers were out on track on their warm-up laps. As the session was stopped, none of these drivers were able to complete their timed flying laps. This meant that Narain will have to start the feature race from 18th place on the grid.

Narain commented after the session, “I’m actually having mixed emotions after today. I very pleased that I was able to show, to some extent, the potential that the team have, by qualifying 5th for the sprint race. The car feels much better today. I’m really disappointed that I was not able to complete my final qualifying lap. I’m sure that we had the package for a strong qualifying for the feature race as well.”

 
- Yohann J Setna, A1 Team India-  photo A1GP