A1 Team Brazil opens points account in Brno

A1 Team Brazil opened its championship points account today after Sergio Jimenez finished the feature race in seventh place at Brno in the Czech Republic. The result netted the team four points and got its championship battle off to a start in the second round of the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport.

Sergio began the afternoon's 38-lap main event from the third row of the grid after a strong performance in yesterday's qualifying saw him set the sixth quickest time. At the first corner the 23-year-old fell to seventh behind eventual race-winner New Zealand. He then enjoyed a great fight over the next few laps with France, from which he emerged victor. He made his first of two compulsory pitstops on lap 12 and unfortunately, due to a slow pitstop, he came out in ninth position.

By lap 18 he was able to claw back those two positions as Great Britain suffered a puncture and he then overtook South Africa. After the second pitstop Sergio was in seventh, the position in which he crossed the line.

In this morning's 10-lap sprint event Sergio dropped one position after the rolling start to tenth. On lap seven, despite fighting hard against old tyres, Sergio was not able to hold off the advances of China and fell to eleventh where he finished, just missing out on one point.

Sergio Jimenez: 'I had a normal start but then on the first corner I had to brake very early to avoid China ahead of me and New Zealand was able to get past me. Otherwise there are a lot of positives to take from the race and we are aware of the areas we have to work on. We were on the pace and set the third fastest lap of the race, so we know we are making good progress and we know we have a good car.

Unfortunately both of the pitstops were a bit slow so we need to work a bit on qualifying and get the pitstops right. If it were not for losing time in the pits today we would have been in fourth position and perhaps on the podium, so that lost us a few positions.'

Fernando Paiva, Team Principal: 'We're pleased that we've picked up some points and are extremely happy with Sergio's progress and the way he has been performing. He was very quick throughout the race, as he was in Zandvoort.

We have put a new team together and are learning all the time. We were hoping to have improved the pitstops since Zandvoort, but we're still suffering from that problem at the moment. Otherwise, we would have collected more from this race.'

1. New Zealand - 15pts (+ 1pt fastest lap)

2. Great Britain - 12pts

3. Ireland- 10pts

11. Brasil

1. New Zealand - 15pts

2. Netherlands - 12pts

3. Switzerland - 10pts

7. Brasil

1. New Zealand - 37pts

2. South Africa - 36pts

3. Great Britain - 31pts

11. Brasil - 4pts 

- Rebecca Banks-  photos A1GP