Ireland slam Fauzy after tangle

Carroll's team had been 12 points clear going into the South African event, but are now second in the standings, three points behind Switzerland - who won the feature race with Neel Jani while Carroll retired on lap one following a tangle with Fauzy.

"I'm pretty annoyed, pretty angry with the Malaysia driver," said Carroll. "Malaysia was slow coming onto the back straight so I used my push-to-pass and I knew I was ahead. I even turned in quite late to give him some room and he just hit me in the back right corner."

Team boss Mark Gallagher was furious with Fauzy over the incident.

"Frankly I'm disgusted," he said. "It's taken us four seasons to get to this level of competitiveness. We're pushing to win a championship and it's not the only time that this driver has caused incidents - in fact he did the same thing to New Zealand later in the race.

"That's cost us the championship points lead that we fought so hard to create. It's now developed into a very tight three-way battle at the head of the points table with Switzerland, Portugal and ourselves.

"We were on course to consolidate our points lead today but for a piece of poor driving. Team Malaysia is one of the very best in A1GP, but today their driver has cost us dearly."

But Gallagher insisted that the incident would not derail their title challenge.

"We're still very much in it so now we have to put this weekend behind us and focus on reproducing the performances that helped us to the series lead in the first place," he said. "It's still all to play for."