Brazil

A1 Team Brasil's Raphael Matos (right) will line up on the sixth row of the grid for tomorrow's A1GP sprint race at the Taupo circuit in New Zealand. After this afternoon's four-part qualifying session, the drivers' two best qualifying laps were combined to form the grid, with Raphael's two laps putting him in twelfth position overall.

This morning's final one-hour free practice session proved disappointing for the team. After a satisfying rookie practice yesterday, Raphael was hoping to set some improved times this morning, but in a competitive session, running on tyres that had grained yesterday, he was only able to finish 21st in the standings, with a lap time of 1:15.797.

Although not the top ten grid slot the team were hoping for, this afternoon's qualifying session was an improvement on some of the team's more recent results. He was able to improve his lap times in the session, setting his fastest laps of 1:15.479 and 1:15.354 in the second and final segments respectively.

Tomorrow's 20-minute sprint race will begin at 1100hrs local time (GMT+13hrs). The top six finishers in the race will score points and the final standings will form the grid for the 70-minute feature race. The main race will begin at 1500hrs and will see the top ten finishers scoring points.

Raphael Matos: "I wouldn't say I'm happy with the qualifying position, but I think we made a lot of progress from this morning, and definitely from Malaysia and Indonesia, and I believe that we are much closer to the top guys than before. In practice we had to suffer from a problem we had yesterday with tyre graining. We used the old tyres and had to live with losing almost a full second just because of that, but we knew that qualifying would be much better, and it was. The car is getting better and I'm still learning about the one-lap qualifying and working with my new engineer. I am hoping that we can score some points tomorrow."

Emerson Fittipaldi, Team Principal: "We have made an improvement from the last races, but we still need to find another second. The car is still off but we are getting there. The weekend is going very well, the crowds are good, the track is beautiful and the organisation is unbelievably good. The race is big news here, the whole country seems to be behind it and we have news everywhere; on the TV and the radio and in the newspapers. New Zealand is showing the potential that A1GP has internationally."

Canada

A1 Team Canada's James Hinchcliffe marked his first qualifying session of the New Year with a seventh place effort at Taupo Motorsports Park, New Zealand on Saturday prior to Sunday's sixth round of the 2006-07 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport.

The 20-year-old Toronto-native, competing for Canada in the nation versus nation series for the first time since Round 3 in China last November, clocked an aggregate time of 2m30.021s from his two fastest laps around the 3.5km Taupo circuit, setting himself up for a fourth row grid slot in Sunday morning's 20-minute Sprint race.

Hinchcliffe started the first of his four timed runs with an absolute flier on a fresh set of Cooper tires. The rookie racer posted the second fastest lap time with a 1m14.996s, just two tenths of a second shy of France's Loic Duval's leading best. Staying on the same set of rubber for his next run James remained competitive with the sixth fastest time, a 1m15.025s.

James' attempt to improve his best time on new tires was hampered by New Zealand's Jonny Reid in his third outing as the home favorite, and winner of both races in Round 5, forced the Canadian to back off following a brief off-track excursion leading to a disappointing 1m15.701s lap. While he bettered that on his fourth and final run, Hinchcliffe couldn't find the speed in the car to top his first two outings. Germany's Nico Hülkenberg claimed his maiden A1GP pole with French rookie Loic Duval joining his European rival on the front row for the morning's Sprint event - the results of which determine the grid for the afternoon's 70-minute Feature race.

"We'd certainly hoped for more from qualifying," stated Hinchcliffe: "I'm disappointed as I know I've got to work on my qualifying performances but we also just didn't have the speed there in the final run on new tires. This is a really slick track as it's a brand new surface. We've seen plenty of people go off so we can hopefully get a decent points haul tomorrow if we steer clear of trouble!"

France

Following a trouble-free final practice session on Saturday morning where A1 Team France finished fifth fastest with a time of 1.14.658. In his first ever A1GP qualifying, driver Loic Duval (left) qualified in 2nd place and will leave from front row for Sunday's sprint race.