| Jarvis eighth fastest for A1 Team Great Britain in China |
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Qualifying, Round 3/12 – A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, Beijing, China Saturday November 11, 2006 – A1 Team Great Britain’s rookie racer, Oliver Jarvis, was left frustrated in China ahead of Sunday’s third round of the 2006-07 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport as Saturday’s planned practice and qualifying sessions were disrupted due to on-going issues with the Beijing street circuit, the grid for tomorrow’s Sprint race set by today’s recorded practice times. An extended official practice session was meant as a precursor to qualifying but as the first session progressed further issues were raised and as a result all on-track activity for the day was postponed leaving A1 Team Great Britain eighth quickest of the 22 nations set to compete with Jarvis (22) starting eighth on the grid for his A1GP race debut.
“It started out as a good solid session and I wasn’t pushing too hard,” Jarvis remarked. “The worst aspect of practice was clearly the manhole covers which don’t seem to be able to take the force of the cars, but it’s a good circuit and certainly different and challenging for the drivers, although I definitely would have liked more track time here before having to race!” A1 Team Great Britain Team Principal John Surtees stated, “Oliver did a good job in practice and was just starting to get underway! He came up to eighth before practice stopped and no doubt would have climbed higher. There are certainly no complaints about the performance of the car or the driver here, though we may have some complaints about the preparation of the circuit. It’s disappointing for the team not to show our true potential but it’s important that the race takes place tomorrow.” A1GP Round 3 China – Top-10 Practice Times / Top-10 Sprint Grid
1, Netherlands, Jeroen Bleekemolen, 1:00.093 Sunday’s Sprint race is scheduled to start at 11am in Beijing (3am GMT) with the Feature starting at 3pm local time (7am GMT). Sky Sports 3 will broadcast all the action from China starting at 6am GMT on Sunday 12th November – please check www.skysports.com for further details. |
Modifications had been made overnight to the original configuration, chiefly the removal of the hairpin bend at Turn 8 which had caused the initial problems in Friday’s aborted running in the Chinese capital. As a result track officials had shortened the length of the main straight, removing the troublesome bend and replacing it with a wider hairpin turn.
