Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

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

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article Manager: don't blame Verstappen
Next article Four street races on 2007 schedule

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe