Brazil

A1 Team Brasil kicked off the third round of the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in a positive fashion today at the Sepang circuit in Malaysia. Sergio Jimenez, driving at the track for the first time, finished second fastest in each of this morning's rookie practices, behind A1GP double-race winner Oliver Jarvis, and followed that up with a strong seventh position in this afternoon's one-hour session.

The main aim of this morning's first 25-minute rookie practice for Sergio was to learn the tricky 5.54km Sepang circuit, and he proved a quick learner as he topped the timesheets half way through the session. Team GBR's Jarvis was the only driver able to improve on Sergio's time and, with the final three minutes of the session cancelled due to a red-flag, the Team Brasil driver did not have time to respond.

Sergio continued his strong form in the second segment of the rookie practice, setting consistently fast times, and once again sitting at the top of the table for much of the session. In a repeat of the first segment, Jarvis once again set a faster time and the field was brought in three minutes early due to another red flag.

In this afternoon's one-hour practice, which saw all of the weekend's race drivers take to the track, Team Brasil tried out several set-up options and set his fastest lap time of 1:50.753 towards the end of the hour, finishing up seventh quickest.

Sergio Jimenez: "We started very well in the rookie session and we used it so that I could learn the track. The car was okay but the tyres were old so it was just normal really. In the second session this afternoon we started with new tyres but we had a lot of oversteer so I couldn't do a good time. After that we kept improving, but the best lap was at the end of the session on old tyres. I think we've found a good way to go but we need to work more to catch the guys ahead so we'll work on that for the morning."

Fernando Paiva, Team Principal: "Sergio did a very good job this morning in getting to know the circuit having never been here before. Of course he did what all the boys do now and played on the video games beforehand, but he did a great job with the real thing. This afternoon we tested a few different things and gradually went back to what has been working for us and did a good time at the end of practice. It was a little shy of where we could have been on newer tyres so it was pretty decent altogether. We're looking for a much improved position tomorrow."

Canada

A shortage of practice laps in Malaysia this morning failed to prevent A1 Team Canada rookie Robert Wickens from cracking the top-ten in this afternoon's official practice session at the Sepang International Circuit prior to Round 3 of the 2007-08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport on Sunday, 25th November.

Wickens, who becomes only the fourth driver to race for A1 Team Canada in the nation versus nation series this weekend, had his practice time cut short in the morning's ‘Rookie-Only' session at the 5.54km circuit thanks to a problematic steering rack. Limited to ten laps, the 18-year-old from Toronto posted the 12th fastest time of the session with a 1m54.695s lap from 20 nations fielding rookies.

This afternoon's hour-long session, with all 22 competing nations participating, proved to be more productive for Canada with Wickens, the 2006 Formula BMW USA Champion, comfortably running inside the top-ten throughout. His best lap time, a 1m50.909s, ended the session eighth quickest with the team looking to maintain that form into Saturday's qualifying sessions, Canada having yet to start a race this season higher than tenth on the grid.

"Today's been pretty good," reflected Wickens after his first outing on the Sepang track. "We had a problem with the steering rack in the rookie session which basically meant I couldn't turn the car so we lost a lot of track time. The team rebounded really well though and I'm extremely satisfied to have been running in the top-ten the whole of this afternoon's session.

He continued, "We made improvements to the car in the limited time we had and despite going out on fresh tires at the start of the session I did my fastest lap on the second to last lap of the session which shows the improvements we've made. I'm really looking forward to Saturday's practice and qualifying."

A1 Team Canada Team Manager, Simon Cayzer, commented; "We had some problems this morning which cost us some time but the second practice session went well. We have some more fine tuning to do but overall we're relatively happy with our set-up start. Robert did a good job today despite being quite new to the car and having never driven the circuit before, he seems quite a cool, calm customer!"

France

A1 Team France set the third-quickest time in Friday's practice on the Sepang circuit in Malaysia. At the end of the day's only session Loïc Duval got to within 0.6s of the quickest time, but his attempts to beat the stopwatch were upset by a yellow flag at the end of practice.

The team reckons it has found a number of useful set-up adjustments and is quietly confident for the next two days. Its aim is to finish on the podium in this weekend's two races and to close the gap in the overall classification.