Seventh straight win for France

The Frenchman overtook Switzerland's Neel Jani on the final lap of the sprint race to cap a tremendous battling drive.

Premat lost out at Turn Two at the start of the race after trying to pass Jani around the outside at the rolling start. This allowed Great Britain's Robbie Kerr to slip into second and Premat was left struggling to fend off the New Zealand car of Matt Halliday.

But once Premat regained his rhythm he soon closed in on the Briton and a fantastic fight played out on lap four.

Premat passed Kerr into Turn One, was repassed in Turn Two before hitting Kerr in Turn Four. But the A1 GP cars are nothing if not sturdy and neither car was damaged. Kerr locked up into Turn Eleven and Premat was finally through.

His pursuit of Jani netted Premat the fastest lap and the two DAMS-run cars had a great dice. Coming into the final lap Premat got a strong run out of the final turn and was alongside Jani into Turn One.

The pair ran side-by-side through Turn Two and Jani was still in with a shout for the lead as they exited Turn Four, but Premat had his nose ahead and a superb triumph was sealed.

Kerr held on for third despite intense pressure from Nelson Piquet Jr. The Team Brazil car made a great start from eighth and Piquet pulled inspired passing moves on Team Ireland, Team Holland and Team New Zealand, but couldn't get by Kerr.

Jos Verstappen was close on Piquet's tail after passing Ireland and New Zealand. Halliday held sixth, while Firman had a great fight with local hero Fairuz Fauzy for seventh.

Team Portugal were a distant ninth, just ahead of Team USA, which picked up the final point for 10th. Team India had its best ever A1 result with 11th.

Pos  Driver              Team            Time
 1.  Alexandre Premat    France          29:21.541
 2.  Neel Jani           Switzerland     +   1.231
 3.  Robbie Kerr         Great Britain   +   5.065
 4.  Nelson Piquet Jr.   Brazil          +   6.793
 5.  Jos Verstappen      Netherlands     +   7.973
 6.  Matt Halliday       New Zealand     +  13.162
 7.  Ralph Firman        Ireland         +  13.882
 8.  Fairuz Fauzy        Malaysia        +  15.782
 9.  Alvaro Parente      Portugal        +  20.391
10.  Bryan Herta         Usa             +  20.845
11.  Armaan Ebrahim      India           +  21.394
12.  Timo Scheider       Germany         +  23.107
13.  Adam Khan           Pakistan        +  25.214
14.  Hayanari Shimoda    Japan           +  26.247
15.  Sean Mcintosh       Canada          +  27.408
16.  Tomas Enge          Czech Republic  +  30.010
17.  Enrico Toccacelo    Italy           +  31.171
18.  Mathias Lauda       Austria         +  31.638
19.  Luis Diaz           Mexico          +  34.371
20.  Tengyi Jiang        China           +  37.081
21.  Stephen Simpson     South Africa    +  6 Laps
22.  Khalil Beschir      Lebanon         +  6 Laps
23.  Ananda Mikola       Indonesia       + 10 Laps
24.  Will Davison        Australia       + 11 Laps

Fastest lap: Premat, 1:55.373 on lap 5