Beschir enjoys Brno racing

The opening day of practice in Brno, Czech Republic featured the 22 nations of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport putting the cars through their paces in preparation for Sunday’s two rounds of racing. A1 Team Lebanon fields Khalil Beschir for this weekend’s Feature and Sprint races and he was out on track in the Lebanon car which sports the flags of the Arab nations.

The morning practice sessions are limited to rookie and developing nation drivers, and with A1 Team Lebanon fitting into the latter category, Beschir made good use of having maximum track time. In the first part of the session the team concentrated on the regular setup tasks for the weekend, and in the second session Beschir was able to focus on developing the car balance and improving his lap times as he gained more experience of the track.

With 12th quickest time after the first session, he improved to 7th fastest in the second of these. In the afternoon the field of drivers who will race on Sunday completed the first official practice sessions. Five of the morning session drivers are driving throughout the weekend, with Beschir as one of these. The session was used by the team to continue their development work. Beschir worked closely with the engineers to review different options for qualifying tomorrow.

He said of the opening day of running, "It felt good to be back racing again at an A1GP event. The session this morning was very productive and we were able to run through the routine tasks of the first day of running, while I was also reacquainting myself with this circuit, which I ran on a few years ago. The car felt good, but I think there’s more to come from me and from the car. I know the sectors that I need to concentrate on to give me a better lap time, so tomorrow I’ll be able to work on this. I didn’t get the best from my new tyres, so I think our overall position isn’t reflective of our pace, but tomorrow afternoon is the important session, so we’ll work towards this now."

Marcus Koch, Chief Engineer, A1 Team Lebanon, added, "We’ve made a good start today. Khalil has had the chance to learn the circuit in the first session while we also completed some of the standard necessary tasks at the beginning of the weekend. This afternoon we started to work on different setup options, so that we can evaluate these for tomorrow. We’ll also be reviewing the data with Khalil and plan our programme to improve the pace in qualifying. "

The A1GP Series features ten events across the globe. The first race weekend was two weeks ago in Zandvoort, with this spectacle attracting over 85,000 supporters. The Brno event is followed by Malaysia and China prior to the end of 2007. It resumes in New Zealand and then heads to Australia.

Next stop is South Africa, then on to Mexico before a return to China, and the season finale back in Europe, at the home of the A1GP cars, the UK.

- Alison Hill, photo A1GP -