A1GP news

Disappointment for France

A1 Team France continued its weekend on the Brno circuit in the second round of the 2007-2008 A1GP Championship. After the 4 qualifying heats, Nicolas Lapierre will be 10th on the grid for the Sprint Race and 8th for the feature race. 

Tyre management will be a crucial factor in both events, and the set-up adopted by A1 Team France limits the extreme tyre wear on the very abrasive Brno circuit. This advantage could prove decisive at the end of the races. 

"Nicolas Prost and Nicolas Lapierre's work yesterday on worn rubber has borne fruit," said France's new sporting director Olivier Panis. "The fall-off in tyre performance is enormous on this circuit, but we've managed to limit the problem in race set-up. We still wear our tyres, but less than the others. Of course, we'd have liked to do better in qualifying, but the performances of the cars are so close that the slightest little problem can have serious consequences. Nicolas Lapierre was a late replacement for Loic Duval, and we didn't have enough time to allow him to find his marks. Thus, he maybe didn't have enough confidence to really go for it this afternoon. We've got measured ambitions for the short race but in the other one anything can happen. We'll draw our conclusions after the chequered flag falls." 

Nicolas Lapierre commented, "We were quick this morning but we weren't able to maintain the same pace with the new tyres when we went out this afternoon. Our race set-up is almost perfect. Maybe we lacked just that little extra bit of time to prepare for qualifying. We were a second off pole but the gap is much smaller in race conditions. Overall, I'm pretty confident for tomorrow. We've got nothing to lose for the Sprint race while the Feature race will allow us to make the best of the situation with a strategy well adapted to race circumstances."

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