Carroll wins sprint race for Ireland
Ireland took their first victory of A1GP's Powered by Ferrari era courtesy of a perfect race from Adam Carroll in the Sprint Race at Chengdu
Carroll started from pole and saw off an early challenge from the Netherlands before slowly building his advantage to eventually claim victory with a margin of 2.371 seconds.
"I just tried to keep my head down and not make any mistakes," Carroll said. "But it's going to be a pretty long race this afternoon."
The Netherlands might not have had an answer to Ireland, but Robert Doornbos never looked under threat for second place, giving the Dutch team a podium in his first ever race in an A1 car.
"It feels good to be on the podium," Doornbos said. "Obviously it's the best first impression you can make. We started strong - we missed pole by just 0.006s - and in the race it was the same. I'm very happy with second."
The final podium spot was filled by another A1 debutante in the form of Team GBR's Danny Watts, but the Briton was made to work hard for the result by Switzerland's Neel Jani.
The reigning champion pushed Watts hard over the closing laps, but a small mistake at the end of the penultimate lap gave Watts just enough breathing space to secure third, albeit by a margin of just 0.3 seconds.
"It's a great result, and a great reward for all the hard work that all the boys have put in throughout the week," Watts said. "Third is good points for us, but we'll have to see how we go this afternoon."
South Africa finished fourth after spending most of the race fighting off Portugal, with New Zealand, France, Monaco and India completing the top 10.
The result was a noteworthy one for India who, like GBR, are making their season debut in China this weekend. Mexico, who are the third team competing for the first time in the 2008/9 season, finished 16th behind Team USA's Marco Andretti.
The race passed generally without incident, although Brazil finished several laps down after pitting early with mechanical problems, while China had to settle for 17th as a result of an early spin.
Pos Driver Team Time 1. Adam Carroll Ireland 22:58.470 2. Robert Doornbos Netherlands + 2.037 3. Danny Watts Great Britain + 14.361 4. Neel Jani Switzerland + 14.619 5. Adrian Zaugg South Africa + 20.108 6. F.Albuquerque Portugal + 20.475 7. C.van der Drift New Zealand + 27.224 8. Nicolas Prost France + 27.923 9. Clivio Piccione Monaco + 30.378 10. N.Karthikeyan India + 32.268 11. John Martin Australia + 33.198 12. Daniel Morad Lebanon + 34.293 13. Fairuz Fauzy Malaysia + 34.655 14. Edoardo Piscopo Italy + 36.541 15. Marco Andretti USA + 38.102 16. David Garza Mexico + 42.511 17. Ho-Pin Tung China + 49.611 18. Satrio Hermanto Indonesia +1:04.128 19. Jin-Woo Hwang Korea +1:06.171 20. Felipe Guimarães Brazil + 4 Laps
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments