Hulkenberg cruises to sprint win

The rolling start had to be held twice after Loic Duval put his Team France car on the wrong side of the track for the first one, but that was as troubled as Hulkenberg was throughout.

"It was a good start for me and I'm very happy," said the winner.

Duval initially kept the pressure on, but the tight layout meant overtaking was risky, and he backed off to claim his first A1 podium.

He was trailed home by crowd favourite Jonny Reid for a solid podium finish for Team New Zealand.

"I'll take third," said Reid. "The car was reasonable, so we need to make some small changes for the feature race."

The lead trio had a big advantage over the rest, who were headed by Jeroen Bleekemolen in the Dutch entry. He had the Swiss car of Sebastien Buemi on his gearbox throughout, but there was no change of place.

James Hinchcliffe picked up the final point for Team Canada. He swapped places with Team GB's Robbie Kerr in the opening laps, but Kerr was carrying damage from a clash with Alex Yoong's Malaysian car, inflicted during the aborted rolling start.

In fact, Kerr was in many ways the star of the race. He lost another place to South African Alan van der Merwe but held on grimly for the rest of the race, despite having the remainder of the field lined up behind him.