A1GP news

Netherlands happy with fifth on grid

A1 Team Netherlands will start the A1GP Sprintrace in Durban tomorrow from fifth on the grid. In an exciting qualifying Jeroen Bleekemolen set an aggregate time of 2'36.379 (1'17.936 +1'18.500). 

This morning A1 Team Netherlands finished in seventh in the final free practice session, which had been extended by 10 minutes because of the cut short session yesterday. Bleekemolen was unlucky to encounter traffic on his laps with new tyres and suffered a flat tyre near the end of the session. 

That flat tyre caused A1 Team Netherlands to have only two sets of new tyres for the four qualifying runs, instead of three. In the first segment the team only managed to finish in thirteenth, but in runs two and three the team quickly climbed to a fifth grid position. The qualifying was stopped a number of times with red flags. This was also the case in the fourth session, just as Bleekemolen set his fastest time and moved up to fourth. After a long break A1 Team Netherlands just managed to drive itself in front of A1 Team Netherlands, ending up in third. A1 Team Germany took the pole after a close battle with A1 Team New Zealand. 

Jeroen Bleekemolen commented, "At least we are in the top five. We had some disadvantage from the fact that we only had two sets of new tyres, because of that flat tyre. If that had not happened, we might have been one or two places more up front. We are again competitive. In the race itself anything can happen, that you know. I am at least pleased that we have got a good pace. In sector three we still have to find some time though. It was very busy on the track, you encounter traffic almost all the time. You have to try to time well. In the first run we were totally off and from then on the team sent me out at the right moment, that was perfect. It is also one of the most important things. The little sprint with Portugal was fun, I just wanted to set my time first, because then you have a smaller chance of a red flag and no chance of encountering traffic."

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