Team Brazil

A1 Team Brasil will line up on the eighth row of the grid for tomorrow's A1GP Grand Prix of Nations sprint race at the Shanghai International Circuit in China. Vitor Meira qualified in 15th position for the team in his first A1 four-part qualifying session, and after only getting around half of the available practice time prior to qualifying due to technical issues with the car.

Vitor was looking forward to a productive final practice session this morning after sitting out the majority of yesterday due to a water leak on the Team Brasil car. He took the opportunity to get in some solid running, and completed 26 laps during the hour, with a fastest time of 1:37. 084, which put him 13th in the standings.

In his first time tackling the unique A1GP four-part qualifying session, Vitor quickly got to grips with the format. He posted top ten times in the first two segments to put him provisionally 10th. However, with the session becoming increasingly competitive, after the end of the session, he ended up 15th, albeit after setting a storming lap time of 1:35.982 in the final segment.

Vitor Meira: "This was my first qualifying of this kind and it surprised me to be honest. You hear the stories about how tough it is, and when you get out there it is way tougher than you think. I thought after my first lap things were going to be good, but it just gets tougher and the gaps start to build. I am on a steep learning curve and my last lap in qualifying was really good, so things are going in the right direction. We obviously lost out yesterday because having only one practice means we had half the running of everyone else. So it hurt us, but it is what it is and there's no point complaining. I think Team Brasil definitely has a car with a good pace, and we are pretty confident for the race, which is what counts right now. We want to survive the sprint, and then take advantage of the car we have for the feature race."

Emerson Fittipaldi: "We have been very impressed with Vitor. He is very professional and is working well with the team and engineers. He just needs more time in the car, it's a shame we lost nearly the whole hour yesterday so he had a lot less practice than anyone else and he didn't know the car or the circuit. In qualifying he did a very good job on his last lap, and would have been within the top ten with another lap like that. I'm looking forward to seeing how he does in the race tomorrow."

Team Canada

Sean McIntosh returned A1 Team Canada to the top-ten in qualifying for the first time since January's sixth round in New Zealand as he posted the ninth fastest time from 22 nations at the Shanghai International Circuit in China prior to Sunday's tenth and penultimate round of the 2006-07 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport.

McIntosh's qualifying performance equaled his two previous starts in A1GP this season in Round 4 and Round 5 in Malaysia and Indonesia respectively. The 21-year-old from Coquitlam, who finished sixth overall in the World Series by Renault last season, steadily built his way up to Saturday afternoon's qualifying effort, finishing Friday's practice session 14th fastest and mirroring that performance in final practice on Saturday morning.

Making his racing debut in China, having missed out on the corresponding round last season as Champ Car veteran Patrick Carpentier raced for Canada, Sean posted a lap time of 1m36.950s on his first of four qualifying runs at the Shanghai track – the fastest two forming his aggregate time for Sunday morning's 20-minute Sprint race. Faster on used rubber on his next lap, this time recording a 1m36.601s, the Canadian was knocking on the door to the top-ten with half the session completed.

Gaining confidence in the car, Sean stepped it up on his third run armed with a fresh set of Cooper tires. His lap time of 1m36.057s was the ninth fastest of the third session but he was to go faster still in his fourth and final run. Lapping in 1m35.798s, Sean's fastest lap was good for eighth quickest in the last session and combined with his previous lap helped form an aggregate time of 3m11.855s, good for ninth on the Sprint grid and Canada's highest starting slot since Toronto's James Hinchcliffe bagged seventh in Round 6 at Taupo Motorsports Park in New Zealand back in January.

Great Britain's Robbie Kerr captured pole from New Zealand's Jonny Reid in the dying seconds of the afternoon's qualifying session while Round 3 Feature winner, Italy's Enrico Toccacelo lines up alongside McIntosh on the fifth row of the grid.

"It was a pretty good qualifying session for my first time back in the car since December and probably the best out of the three I've taken part in this season," reflected Sean. "We've been working steadily to get to where we're at now. I've never been happy with ninth before but it's good for the first weekend back in the car. We're improving and I'm sure we'll have a competitive car for the races."

Team France

A1 Team France qualified seventh for the sprint race with Jean-Karl Vernay at the wheel for the second time this year.

Following a trouble-free final practice session on Saturday morning A1 Team France was upbeat ahead of qualifying. In that session Vernay put his car in seventh place on the grid with an aggregate time of 3:11.525 for the start of his first sprint race in China tomorrow.