India

After yesterday's atrocious weather conditions, all the teams were ready for continued rain on Saturday morning for the 3rd official practice session. The team arrived at the circuit before the crack of dawn to make sure the car is fully prepared for the practice session which was to start at 11 am. The weather in the morning was the same as yesterday with rain and fairly cold temperatures.

However by the start of the session, the rain had stopped and the sun was just breaking through the clouds. The track surface was still very wet, and the cars went out on track with wet weather tyres and a full wet weather setup. A1 Team India's driver, Armaan Ebrahim had spent many hours yesterday in de-briefing sessions with his engineers and had studied his telemetry from yesterday's sessions very carefully. The team had prepared a strategy which should have allowed him to show significant improvements in his lap-times. He went back to his hotel last night, had an early dinner, and was off to bed.

The first half of the session was very wet, A1 team India put their strategy to good use, with 6th fastest in the wet, only 2 seconds slower than the quickest car out on track. An improvement of 7 seconds a lap from lap-times yesterday. This is an outstanding performance from a driver who has never driven at this circuit before, made even more creditable considering the adverse weather and track conditions.

Towards the end of the session, the track dried out considerably and in the last ten minutes many of the drivers started to go out onto the track on slicks (dry weather tyres). Lap times started tumbling. With 5 minutes to go in the session, A1 Team India sent the car out onto the track on slicks, but weren't able to get a single clear lap as Armaan was stuck in a lot of traffic. A1 team India finished the session in 22nd place.

For the qualifying session, the weather was dry and sunny, with partly cloudy skies. A1 Team India was looking forward to the qualifying session, which will consist of four 15 minutes sessions, with 10 minute intervals between each session. Each driver will be able to drive one flying lap during each of the sessions. The best two lap times will be added together to produce an aggregate time, which will decide the starting grid positions for the sprint race tomorrow. The finishing positions of the sprint race will decide the starting grid for the feature race, which will start one hour after the sprint race finishes.

Qualifying did not go well as far as the grid position is concerned as A1 Team India are 24th on the grid. However, the plus point was that Armaan improved by almost 4 seconds as compared to the first qualifying run with a time of 1:38.9 secs and the 4th lap qualifying run of 1:35.2 secs.

The team is quite positive to make quite a few places in the sprint race on Sunday which will then put the team in a better position for the main race. Despite the 24th place on the grid, the morale of the team is very high after being consistently 6th in the wet in the final practise session.

Brazil

A1 Team Brasil got off to a fantastic start at the third round of the A1 Grand Prix series at Circuito Estoril today when Nelson Piquet Jr put the team on pole position for tomorrow's first race.

The day began with the third and final official practice session. The track dried out considerably throughout the hour, with lap times dropping by some twenty seconds by the end. Although starting out with overcast weather conditions, the session ended with bright sunshine, which remained until the end of this afternoon's qualifying. Team Brasil put in a strong performance throughout the practice, and were consistently fast. Nelson completed 17 laps, with a fastest time of 1:33.414 to put the team in second position on the timesheets.

Qualifying did not start off too well for Team Brasil when Nelson had a spin during the first session. However, he more than made up for his mistake in the second session when he recorded the fastest lap of the weekend at that point, breaking the 1 minute 31 second barrier for the first time, with a time of 1:30.755. After another good lap in the third session he moved up to provisional second place, with Team Switzerland ahead by 0.165s. In the fourth session he put himself on pole in style by recording a time of 1:30.561, his aggregate time of his two fastest laps putting him ahead of second-placed Switzerland by over half a second.

Nelson Piquet Jr: "I am really happy, especially after we had the spin on the first lap. It was the first time the circuit has been completely dry but it was not actually much quicker than the end of practice, so I really pushed hard on old tyres and I made a mistake and slipped. I felt the car was not very well-balanced, so we changed a lot in the ten minutes before the second session. The car was much better then, and I did some good laps and everything went well in the end."

Emerson Fittipaldi: "It is a very special day because everyone has run on damp and wet so far and this is the first time we have run on dry. It's hard for anyone to get a good first run in that situation. I am very happy with the team performance, the engineer who improved the car based on Nelsinho's feedback, and of course with Nelsinho who did a fantastic job. It's a fantastic start for us."

USA

On a sunny day at the Circuito Estoril, A1 Team USA struggled to tame the twists and turns with a qualifying time of 3'05.024. That time put A1 Team USA into 15th place at the end of Saturday's qualifying session at the 2005 A1 Grand Prix in Portugal.