Lebanon thrilled with third on the grid

He had secured their previous best starting spot of tenth at Zandvoort, but qualified third for Sunday's feature race in Malaysia. He saved the power boost for the final segment of qualifying and narrowly edged out Malaysia and Portugal behind polesitter Ireland and second-placed Great Britain, but most of the field had also saved their boost for the same lap.

Morad says he was surprised to qualify so far up, but believes it shows the step forward Lebanon have taken with the new A1GP car.

"It was a clean lap, but it didn't feel that quick because you have to brake earlier when you carry that bit more speed," he told autosport.com. "I couldn't see the time because the dash just said 'push to pass'.

"I didn't know what had happened until I got back to the pits and everyone was surrounding me. They told me I was third and I was quite surprised.

"You don't want to judge it off one race, but it's really exciting and I'm confident we genuinely have the pace now. We had some trouble with the engine misfiring so it wasn't until feature qualifying that we had everything figured out.

"It's a huge boost, we got points at Zandvoort and here we have the potential to be on the podium. We've made a huge jump forward and I think it's not just for here, it should be everywhere. The best thing we can do is to try to get Lebanon on the map in motorsport, to show its potential. I'm sure there are good drivers there, but at the moment they don't have the resources or the opportunity to move forward."

Starting just 18th for the sprint race tomorrow, Morad says they will use the track time to prepare the car for the later feature race, where he believes he can move forward from his second row starting spot.

"We'll just try to learn as much as we can about race setup in the sprint because it's going to be difficult to make up the ten places to the points," he said.

"Then if I can stay with Ireland and Great Britain at the start (of the feature), we're one of the quickest at pit stops and I'm confident that if I can do my job, the team will do theirs and that could leapfrog me ahead."