USA lead final practice
Team USA recorded the fastest time in the final practice session for Sunday's A1 GP season opener at Zandvoort
Philip Giebler spent much of the session on the fringes of the top ten but put in a stormer in the last few seconds to pip the impressive Congfu Cheng of China to top spot.
Before teams started fitting new tyres to prepare for their qualifying runs, the fastest cars appeared to be those of Great Britain's Darren Manning, Adrian Zaugg (South Africa) and the Australian entry of Ryan Briscoe.
Zaugg set the early pace, South Africa's improvement this season again being apparent, until Manning went ahead with a time of 1:30.358.
Team GB's position seemed all the stronger because Manning was able to lap consistently under 1:31, but Briscoe was also fast and knocked Manning off top spot with less than half the session to go.
The Australian car stayed on top until the final moments when first Cheng and then Giebler pushed it down to third.
Behind Manning came Brazil's Tuka Rocha in fifth. Rocha had struggled to get into the top ten for most of the session and suffered a spin before a late charge resulted in an improvement to 1:30.430, just ahead of Zaugg - who failed to improve on the mark he set early on.
Salvador Duran was another to set a quick early time then gradually fall down the order as others improved.
The Mexican car nevertheless held off Switzerland's Sebastien Buemi and France's Nicolas Lapierre.
The Frenchman ran in the top five initially, but never improved on his early 1:30.862. Team France, however, remain confident and are much more likely to show their true pace come qualifying this afternoon.
Friday's pacesetter James Hinchcliffe finished down in 12th for Team Canada, just behind Germany's Nik Hulkenberg.
The home team's Jeroen Bleekemolen, another star on Friday, was 14th quickest, but the competitiveness of the field was emphasised by the fact that just 1.3 seconds separated him from Briscoe in third.
Final practice times:
Pos Team Driver Time 1. USA Philip Giebler 1:29.605 2. China Congfu Cheng 1:29.686 + 0.081 3. Australia Ryan Briscoe 1:30.284 + 0.679 4. Great Britain Darren Manning 1:30.323 + 0.718 5. Brazil Tuka Rocha 1:30.433 + 0.828 6. South Africa Adrian Zaugg 1:30.515 + 0.910 7. Mexico Salvador Duran 1:30.753 + 1.148 8. Switzerland Sebastien Buemi 1:30.779 + 1.174 9. France Nicolas Lapierre 1:30.861 + 1.256 10. New Zealand Matt Halliday 1:30.964 + 1.359 11. Germany Niko Hulkenberg 1:31.224 + 1.619 12. Canada James Hinchcliffe 1:31.362 + 1.757 13. Malaysia Alex Yoong 1:31.431 + 1.826 14. Netherlands Jeroen Bleekemolen 1:31.558 + 1.953 15. India Armaan Ebrahim 1:31.968 + 2.363 16. Italy PG Alessandro 1:31.973 + 2.368 17. Indonesia Ananda Mikola 1:32.157 + 2.552 18. Czech Republic Tomas Kostka 1:32.672 + 3.067 19. Singapore Christian Murchison 1:33.371 + 3.766 20. Lebanon Basil Shaaban 1:33.423 + 3.818 21. Greece Vasilis Papafilippoy 1:34.540 + 4.935 22. Pakistan Nur Ali 1:36.116 + 6.511 23. Ireland Michael Devaney no time
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