New Zealand - 1st

The New Zealand team has set the fastest time in the first official practice for this weekend's 9th Round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in Mexico.

After a slow start on the bumpy 4.46km Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit in Mexico City, Kiwi driver Jonny Reid hit his straps to edge out Great Britain and Germany for the day's quickest lap.

A1 Team.NZL Engineering Director David Sears says Reid's effort was impressive given he set his time on old tyres. "Great Britain set their fastest time on their second lap and Germany did similarly on their fourth lap, so to whip past their times in his 24 th lap on old tyres was a pretty useful effort," Sears said.

Sears said the track was incredibly bumpy, but very quick and will only get faster as more rubber is laid down. "It's been a real learning experience given we're at an altitude of eight thousand feet and we're losing twenty five per cent of our down force. It makes it challenging for the drivers and engineering crew."

Many of the teams have new drivers behind the wheel this weekend, including series leader Germany and New Zealand's nearest challengers France and Great Britain.

"I'd like to think Jonny and Black Beauty will be prancing at the front of the grid after tomorrow's qualifying," Sears said.

Great Britain - 2nd

Oliver Jarvis seized his second opportunity to compete for A1 Team Great Britain in this weekend's ninth round of the 2006-07 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, 23rd – 25th March, by capping Friday's practice outing with ‘fastest rookie' honours.

The 23-year-old from Burwell, Cambridgeshire signaled his intent early in this morning's ‘Rookie-Only' session at the 2.74-mile track, powering his 550bhp A1GP car to the top of the timesheets ahead of current series leaders A1 Team Germany with a flying lap of 1m28.597s, six tenths clear of Christian Vietoris in second.

Jarvis' consistency kept the British team at the head of the pack for much of the afternoon's hour-long practice session, their potential sweep of Friday's sessions blighted only by Jonny Reid's late effort in the New Zealand entry. Oliver remained the fastest rookie with the second quickest time of the day, just a tenth of a second shy of Reid's best, a 1m28.174s.

Oliver Jarvis: "I seemed to get the hang of the track pretty quickly which is a definite bonus. It's quite a challenging circuit with some significant bumps but there are also some handy looking overtaking opportunities. We tried to change our set-up this afternoon to see if we could combat the effect of the bumps but it didn't really work so we reverted back to this morning's configuration. I'm still working on getting the best out of a new set of tyres but overall I think we're looking strong for qualifying. It'll be my first crack at the aggregate lap time given I didn't get to qualify when I last raced in China as the session was cancelled. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do this time round."

Paul Bellringer – A1 Team Great Britain Team Manager: "Oliver did a superb job for us today and we certainly have no complaints with running so consistently at the front of the pack. We tried a slightly different set-up in the afternoon practice which actually set us back a little but there was no cause for concern as we knew we had a competitive package. Based on today's performance you have to think we have a good shot at being up there in qualifying tomorrow. Oliver's given us a good grounding and hopefully we can build on it."

Germany - 3rd