A1GP news

Malaysia hopeful from eighth

A1 Team Malaysia continued race preparations for the tenth round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in Shanghai, China today, finishing eighth in qualifying, in a closely fought battle amongst the front-runners.

Morning practice was an uninterrupted one-hour of running in cool temperatures, but with plenty of heat on the track. The leader-board changed regularly as the front running teams all pushed to gain the maximum from their cars. Malaysia was in the thick of the rivalry, with Yoong starting the session just inside the top ten, moving up to fourth quickest by the midway point of the session and by the end of the session had improved to post second fastest time.

In the qualifying session which started at 14h15 local time today, Yoong was lying fifth in the first three segments, but being unable to improve on his time in the final one, he dropped to eighth fasted lap time overall to line up in this position for the Sprint race tomorrow.

Yoong said of qualifying, "This was not the qualifying position we had hoped for. We made a few changes to the car during the qualifying session as we were suffering with understeer yesterday but we ended up with oversteer today and we just have not been able to find the balance in the car. So I'm a bit disappointed tonight.

However, on a positive note, this is a great track for overtaking and we hope to do plenty of it tomorrow. I enjoy races like that and I think I'll enjoy tomorrow's races and I think we'll have a good car and be able to make up a few positions."

Jack Cunningham, Team Principal, A1 Team Malaysia commented, "We've been running comfortably in the top ten during the weekend, and we looked for a while as if we were on for a top five starting spot, but just slipped back.

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