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Brazil Takes Dominant First Pole

Brazil took the first pole position in the inaugural A1 Grand Prix series, as Nelson Piquet Jr dominated qualifying

Piquet set the fastest time in two of the first three segments and was confident enough with his aggregate performance to sit out his final attempt. His aggregate two-lap time was 0.3 seconds faster than the next best car of New Zealand.

A1 GP qualifying has been designed to fit into a two-hour broadcasting slot and is broken into four, 15-minute quarters. Each nation is allowed to complete only one flying lap in each of the four sessions. The fastest two are added together to determine the grid positions for the series' sprint race tomorrow, with the grid for the feature race determined by the finishing order of the sprint race.

Piquet's third session time was the fastest lap recorded so far this weekend around the Brands Hatch Grand Prix circuit, with a lap of 1:14.965.

Matt Halliday's New Zealand car qualified a strong second ahead of Alexandre Premat's French entry, who climbed up the leaderboard with strong runs in the later sessions.

Australia will start directly behind its Southern Hemisphere rival in fourth, while Robbie Kerr pleased the home fans with fifth on the grid, despite complaining of not being able to get a clear lap on his fastest runs.

Neel Jani's Switzerland car was sixth just edging out Mexico's Salvador Duran by fifteen hundredths of a second. Duran took a trip through the gravel at Paddock Hill Bend after his third qualifying run.

Canada's Sean McIntosh caused the first fifteen-minute session to be stopped after spinning at Westfield and beaching his car in the gravel.

The Team USA car of GP2 racer Scott Speed was only 17th quickest, having topped the early free practice yesterday.

Final qualifying results:

Pos  Team            Time
 1.  Brazil          2:30.789       
 2.  New Zealand     2:31.117 +  0.328
 3.  France          2:31.206 +  0.417
 4.  Australia       2:31.388 +  0.599
 5.  Great Britain   2:31.714 +  0.925
 6.  Switzerland     2:31.729 +  0.940
 7.  Mexico          2:32.307 +  1.518
 8.  Pakistan        2:32.596 +  1.807
 9.  Malaysia        2:32.632 +  1.843
10.  Japan           2:32.689 +  1.900
11.  Portugal        2:32.705 +  1.916
12.  Ireland         2:32.811 +  2.022
13.  Germany         2:32.981 +  2.192
14.  Netherlands     2:33.075 +  2.286
15.  South Africa    2:33.086 +  2.297
16.  Italy           2:33.234 +  2.445
17.  Usa             2:33.317 +  2.528
18.  Indonesia       2:33.424 +  2.635
19.  India           2:34.126 +  3.337
20.  Czech Republic  2:34.786 +  3.997
21.  Canada          2:36.656 +  5.867
22.  Austria         2:36.878 +  6.089
23.  Lebanon         2:37.104 +  6.315
24.  China           2:38.750 +  7.961
25.  Russia          2:41.303 + 10.514

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