Ralph Firman qualified his A1 Team Ireland car in 8th place for tomorrow's second round of the A1 Grand Prix of Nations at EuroSpeedway, Lausitz. The Irish team recovered from a difficult start to qualifying, Ralph's car suffering a fuel pressure problem on his first flying lap which saw him unable to accelerate out of the last corner and later stop on the circuit when the engine cut out.

On returning to the pits the team uncovered faults with both the alternator and fuel pump, necessitating replacements being fitted which meant Ralph was unable to participate in the second qualifying run. Speedy work from the A1 Team Ireland mechanics saw the repairs completed in time for the third qualifying run, Ralph managing to set a lap time of 1m33.626s and then 1m33.409s on his final lap, elevating him from 15th to 8th place on the grid for the Sprint Race.

Ralph Firman: "Losing the end of our first run and then missing out completely on the second run was less than ideal because we just didn't get the opportunity to run qualifying as we intended. Once we got the problems solved we made good steps but with the competition in A1GP at such a high level you can't afford to lose half of your qualifying runs and not suffer. The car will be good in the race, however, so I'm looking forward to tomorrow."

Andy Miller, Technical Director: "It's very competitive out there and we didn't need to lose track time in qualifying like this, so we'll be looking into the problems because it cost us quite dearly. Given how we were going this morning and on the two runs we managed to complete without incident, we probably had the speed to get into the top 6 so to end up P8 was something of a save."

Mark Gallagher, Team Principal: "It's always disappointing to have technical problems, and with the aggregate qualifying system in A1GP you really need all four runs to go smoothly to have the right performance curve and optimise the result. Having said that the team worked fantastically well to rectify two separate but significant problems and get the car back out in time for the 3rd and 4th runs. A good effort in difficult circumstances and now we just have to get our heads down for the Sprint Race."