Albuquerque gets Portugal's first win

Albuquerque passed Adam Carroll in the Ireland car at the start to move into second behind leader Danny Watts (Great Britain) and leap-frogged the British car to take the lead by staying out two laps longer at the first round of pit stops.

Albuquerque built a lead of a couple of seconds in the middle of the race and kept it through the second round of stops. But he would have to work hard for the win at the end, thanks to Nicolas Prost who spun off in the Team France car while trying to overtake Australia.

The restart came with six laps remaining and Albuquerque had to survive constant pressure from sprint race winner Carroll in his mirrors to cement Portugal's place as the 17th nation to win an A1GP race.

Carroll came home second, largely thanks to the swift pit work from the Team Ireland crew that got him out ahead of Watts at the second pit stops.

Watts, meanwhile, held off Neel Jani of reigning champions Switzerland for Britain's second podium of the day. His initial lead slipped away when he dropped a place in each of the pit stops.

Team Switzerland finished fourth ahead of Malaysia, who had to work hard for fifth place after a lengthy scrap with Team Australia's John Martin, who in turn was lucky to hold on to sixth after a late challenge from Monaco.

Prost had also been a threat to Australia earlier in the race and actually managed to get past at turn one, but in doing so the Team France car strayed too far off the racing line and spun into the gravel, prompting the appearance from the safety car that put Portugal under pressure at the end.

Marco Andretti scored his first A1GP points for the USA team by finishing eighth, ahead of Team South Africa and Team India.

Contrary to expectations, there was just one other spell behind the safety car besides that triggered by Prost's spin, and it came right at the start of the race when Robert Doornbos stalled on the grid in the Netherlands car.

By the time he got going again he'd fallen off the lead lap, so the former F1 and Champ Car driver had to settle for fastest lap instead.

Pos Driver                 Team                      Gap
 1. Filipe Albuquerque     Portugal          1:11:23.179
 2. Adam Carroll           Ireland                +0.571
 3. Danny Watts            Great Britain          +4.802
 4. Neel Jani              Switzerland            +7.157
 5. Fairuz Fauzy           Malaysia              +13.302
 6. John Martin            Australia             +15.544
 7. Clivio Piccione        Monaco                +16.236
 8. Marco Andretti         USA                   +16.690
 9. Adrian Zaugg           South Africa          +18.030
10. Narain Karthikeyan     India                 +18.759
11. Chris van der Drift    New Zealand           +19.675
12. Ho-Pin Tung            China                 +20.126
13. Daniel Morad           Lebanon               +22.580
14. Satrio Hermanto        Indonesia             +31.285
15. David Garza            Mexico                 +1 lap
16. Robert Doornbos        Netherlands            +1 lap
17. Jin-Woo Hwang          Korea                  +1 lap

Retirements

18. Nicolas Prost          France                 0 laps
19. Edoardo Piscopo        Italy                  0 laps
20. Felipe Guimaraes       Brazil                 0 laps


Fastest lap, Doornbos 1:15.212 on lap 33