Piquet Thrilled with First Pole

The former British F3 Champion had put the Team Brazil car at the top of the grid after three of the four segments, and it didn't look like he was going to be beaten when he took his helmet off and chose not to go out in the final session to try and improve his aggregate time.

Piquet's electronics failed just before he was going to go out in the dying moments of the fourth session: a power supply failure caused Team Brazil's ECU, gearbox controller and data logging system to shut down at the crucial moment. However his best aggregate time wasn't beaten.

"There was an electronic problem - the data system of the car froze and we didn't know why," Piquet said. "Because we had decided to leave it until the end of the session to go out we didn't have time to reset it so we didn't want to risk it.

"But it was great. The first three sessions were perfect and I had used one set of old tyres and two sets of new tyres. I felt confident we could hold onto the position if I had run because I had a new set of tyre for the last session, fortunately nobody managed to go better."