A1GP news

Jani takes the double

Switzerland's Neel Jani put in a sensational performance during qualifying for the A1GP Sepang, Malaysia this afternoon to take pole position for tomorrow's Sprint and Feature races.

The Swiss star will start the Sprint race from P1 tomorrow morning for the third consecutive season at Sepang and he will lead the drivers off the grid for A1GP's 50th ever race tomorrow afternoon in the Feature.

Sprint race qualifying
Neel Jani continued his magnificent form around the Sepang circuit, setting the quickest lap during the first qualifying segment and going on to better it in the second to snatch pole position for the Sprint race from A1 Team France, demoting Loic Duval to second on the grid.

Great Britain's Oliver Jarvis and German rookie Michael Ammermuller will line up alongside each other on the second row of the Sprint race grid, followed by Canada's Robert Wickens and championship leader New Zealand's Jonny Reid in fifth and sixth place respectively.

Feature race qualifying
Having secured pole position for the Sprint race, Jani stamped his authority on the weekend by going on to also take pole for the Feature race, recording an outstanding lap of 1m 47.648s in the closing minutes of the session. The lap was almost a second quicker than Great Britain's Oliver Jarvis who will line up alongside him on the front row.

Germany's Michael Ammermuller and Frenchman Loic Duval qualified in third and fourth position respectively while the Netherlands' Jeroen Bleekemolen will start the Feature race from fifth on the grid. Brazilian rookie Sergio Jimenez will line up alongside the Dutchman in sixth place on the third row.

After a challenging session, home nation Malaysia's Alex Yoong will start the Sprint race from 19th position and the Feature race from 15th.

Neel Jani was delighted with his final flying lap in the Swiss car and is aiming to convert his team's double pole into a double victory tomorrow. 'I thought that my 1m 48.4s lap, which I did on old tyres, might already be enough for pole position,' Jani said. 'So on my last round I just went out and thought I'd just go easy, and suddenly there was a 1m 47.7s lap so maybe that was the solution.

'James, my engineer, and the team adjusted the car for each segment - we made some little adjustments on the tyres with ride heights and each time I went out the car was better and everything was just perfect. I hope we do tomorrow what we didn't do the last two years - get both race wins.'

French driver Loic Duval knows the Sepang circuit well but struggled with the balance of the car during today's qualifying session. 'I've raced here before in a different category so it wasn't so difficult for me to learn the track,' Duval said. 'The braking points are a bit different in an A1GP car but it was enough to be at the front this weekend.

'We had quite a bit of understeer during the first three qualifying segments, so we tried something different in the last one to try to take pole, but then I suffered from big oversteer so it wasn't good actually. We're not quick enough to beat Neel this weekend - in qualifying anyway.'

Great Britain's Oliver Jarvis will start the Sprint race from third on the grid and the Feature race from second. 'We put on a new set of tyres for Qualifying one and the difference was amazing. Unfortunately it just caught me out as the car had a lot of oversteer.

'I turned into the double right hander and the car turned in immediately and I clipped the curb and nearly went off. So we didn't really set a competitive time in Q1 which meant we had to take Qualifying 2 quite cautiously.

'It would have been possible to get pole for the Sprint but we didn't have the pace, so congratulations to Neel and the team, they did a fantastic job to take pole in both.'

Tomorrow's Sprint race at Sepang, Malaysia will start at 11.00 local time (03.00 GMT) and the 70-minute Feature race will start at 15:00 (07.00 GMT).

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