Hayanari Shimoda has been declared fit this morning following his high-speed accident in the A1 Grand Prix of Nations race held yesterday at the Eastern Creek Raceway. He has spent the night in the High Dependency Unit of Westmead hospital under the care of the trauma team who discharged him today after confirming all the tests they ran on him were fine.
A1 Team Japan’s Team Manager, Malcolm Swetnam said: ‘We were concerned about his condition after such a heavy impact, however, the news we received this morning that he was recovering well was just what we wanted to hear.’
A1 Grand Prix’s Global Operations Manager, John Wickham, responsible for all the A1 race cars said: ‘The massive accident that Hayanari Shimoda suffered proved the strength of the A1 chassis. We have always made driver safety one of the prime concerns of the A1 Grand Prix series and everyone involved in the building of our cars felt yesterday’s accident proved the strength of these cars. We are all delighted that he is recovering well.
The 21-year-old who was having his first drive for A1 Team Japan was born in Tokyo and started his racing career in karts at the age of 13. He raced in Formula Renault series and sports cars in Europe and Japan from 2001 to 2004 and when he raced in Le Mans in 2003, he was the youngest driver in the race.
The Eastern Creek Feature Race race was won by A1 Team France, bringing their tally of victories up to six out of eight. A1 Team Great Britain matched their previous highest place from EuroSpeedway Lausitz with a second in Australia and A1 Team Switzerland claimed the final podium position.
A1 Team - Driver - Time
1 France Nicolas Lapierre 1.00.54.068 2 Great Britain Robbie Kerr 1.00.56.547 3 Switzerland Neel Jani 1.00.57.086 4 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 1.00.57.593 5 Malaysia Alex Yoong 1.00.58.955 6 Australia Will Davison 1.00.59.499 7 Portugal Alvaro Parente 1.01.00.070 8 New Zealand Jonny Reid 1.01.02.989 9 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 1.01.03.108 10 USA Bryan Herta 1.01.03.896 11 Pakistan Adam Khan 1.01.05.010 12 Lebanon Basil Shaaban 1.01.07.071 13 India Armaan Ebrahim 1.01.08.343 14 Ireland Michael Devaney 1.01.26.140 15 Canada Sean McIntosh 26 laps 16 Japan Hayanari Shimoda 25 laps 17 China Tengyi Jiang 22 laps 18 Austria Mathias Lauda 17 laps 19 Czech Republic Tomas Enge 17 laps 20 Russia Roman Rusinov 7 laps 21 Mexico Salvador Duran 7 laps 22 Germany Adrian Sutil 7 laps 23 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 6 laps 24 South Africa Stephen Simpson 1 lap
The fastest race lap of the weekend, setting a new lap record for the Eastern Creek Raceway, was recorded in the Sprint race by A1 Team France with a time of 1.19.751 and a top speed of 177.4kph. The fastest lap in the Feature race was also set by A1 Team France with a time of 1.21.015 and a top speed of 174.6kph.
A1 Team France’s Nicolas Lapierre said: ‘The start was not too bad, and I was surprised to see Alvaro on the left so soon, but then the team told me that he had a drive through penalty for jumping the start. I made a small mistake in the first corner as the track was so dirty and Nelson overtook me. Thankfully I managed to get past him again under braking. It was a very exciting race. It went right today, it wasn’t easy but we had a good strategy.’
On sharing the driving with team mate Alexandre Premat, Lapierre commented; ‘It is quite difficult not to be in the car, but we decided at the beginning that we would alternate, so I can’t complain, and I’m really happy with the situation.’
A1 Team Great Britain’s Robbie Kerr said: ‘I had a lock up on the last lap but thankfully, Neel was too far behind to take advantage. It was an interesting race and a good start, I went to the inside of the corner and managed to come away in front and then I was just chasing down Nelson. Nelson gave me room when I overtook, which was fair of him, and then it was a case of being consistent.’
Rounding up the top three, A1 Team Switzerland’s Neel Jani said: ‘In the end I’m just really happy to finish. There were so many safety cars that I’m very happy to finish where I did. The first race was not what we wanted, but the second race was good. We had a good strategy, buy unfortunately Jos (A1 Team Netherlands) was on the same strategy and was always behind me. The first corner is very hard and there was a lot of pressure during the race, but we finished third so it is ok.’
Series Points to date – A1 Grand Prix of Nations, Eastern Creek, Sydney, Australia (6 November 2005)
1 France 71 2 Brazil 52 3 Switzerland 47 4 New Zealand 32 5 Great Britain 30 6 Portugal 27 7 Australia 26 8 Netherlands 26 9 Ireland 23 10 Malaysia 23 11 Canada 23 12 Mexico 16 13 Czech Republic 8 14 Germany 8 15 USA 8 16 Japan 6 17 South Africa 6 18 Indonesia 5 19 Italy 5 20 Pakistan 4 21 Austria 1
The fifth round of A1 Grand Prix, the World Cup of Motorsport will be held at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia on 18 – 20 November 2005.
