A1 Team - Driver - Time - Laps
1 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 23.25.682 18 2 France Alexandre Premat 23.18.122 18 3 New Zealand Matt Halliday 23.18.581 18 4 Australia Will Power 23.27.139 18 5 Great Britain Robbie Kerr 23.28.479 18 6 Mexico Salvador Duran 23.32.955 18 7 Pakistan Adam Khan 23.33.714 18 8 Portugal Alvaro Parente 23.33.871 18 9 Switzerland Neel Janie 23.36.533 18 10 Ireland Michael Devaney 23.36.738 18 11 USA Scott Speed 23.39.548 18 12 Japan Ryo Fukuda 23.40.874 18 13 Malaysia 23.41.033 18 14 Germany Timo Scheider 23.41.587 18 15 India Karun Chandhok 23.43.475 18 16 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 23.51.203 18 17 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 23.56.015 18 18 Czech Republic Jan Charouz 23.56.028 18 19 Canada Sean McIntosh 23.58.303 18 20 Austria Mathias Lauda 24.10.975 18 21 China Tengyi Jiang 24.13.876 18 22 Lebanon Khalil Beschir 24.14.774 18 23 Russia Alexey Vasiliev 23.20.165 17 24 South Africa Stephen Simpson 24.21.309 17
Not classified: A1 Team NetherlandsThe first retirement in A1 Grand Prix went to Dutch hero Jos Verstappen who spun out on lap 1 and despite making it back to the pits was not able to continue. The outcome of the race determines the grid position of the Feature race
QuotesA1 Team Brazil, Nelson Piquet Jr: ‘I am really really happy, it feels like my first race win. I am especially happy after all the effort the team put in in such a short time to bring it all together. Obviously I am happy to be the first driver to win the first race of a new championship. I want to say thank you to Sheikh Maktoum who has created this beautiful show and the team as everything they did was perfect. The only way I could have been more dominant was by opening a larger gap to Alex but he was quite close to me for most of the race and our pace was similar.’A1 Team France, Alexandre Premat: ‘I got a really good start behind Nelson and was able to overtake Matt into the first corner. I think it was really important to start just behind Nelson although he was really fast and obviously it was really hard for me to overtake. I think our lap times were quite close but on a fast circuit like this it was hard for me to overtake him.’A1 Team New Zealand, Matt Halliday: ‘At the start I wanted to come across behind Nelson but there was no gap as Alex was right behind him and it was impossible for me to fit in there. I slotted into third and for us in the first race this is fine as it was not worth taking a risk or doing anything silly and then having to start race 2 from the back of the grid. I am sure all the people back home are very excited as we have a good motorsport heritage.’
