Brazil

The action began today at the Zhuhai International Circuit in China for round four of the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. Sergio Jimenez was at the wheel of the A1 Team Brasil car on his first visit to the track in today's two practice sessions.

Today's focus was for Sergio to get to grips with the 4.3km circuit and find a good set-up for the track. In this morning's two-part rookie practice session Sergio was quickly on the pace, topping the timesheets for much of the first 25-minute segment with his lap time of 1:24.216, until Team Germany set a time just eight hundredths of a second faster on the chequered flag. Sergio put in another solid performance in the second segment, eventually finished third quickest behind Teams Germany and Canada.

Sergio continued his work in the afternoon's one-hour practice. He completed 17 laps with a quickest time of 1:24.248, just under a second off the pace of Team Ireland, who finished the session fastest. All teams will have one further hour of practice tomorrow morning before qualifying.

Sergio Jimenez: "It hasn't been bad today. We started very well in the rookie session and set the second fastest time. At this track it is hard on brakes and everyone will have a problem, especially in the feature race. When we started this afternoon's practice, with new tyres, we used old pads and it wasn't good; I couldn't brake so we didn't get a proper lap. After that we changed the brakes but the tyres were old so we couldn't set a good lap time. The position this afternoon is not where we will be tomorrow, it will be much better."

Canada

A1 Team Canada faced some on-track adversity but still managed to remain at the sharp end of the timesheets with Toronto's Robert Wickens finishing second fastest in Friday practice ahead of Round 4 of the 2007-08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport at China's Zhuhai International Circuit on Sunday, 16th December.

Having reached the podium on his A1GP race debut last time out in Malaysia, 18-year-old Wickens continued to impress as he lapped the 4.30km Zhuhai track for the first time in Friday morning's ‘Rookie-Only' session. Despite a driveshaft issue, he finished second quickest behind Germany's Michael Ammermüller, with a best lap of 1m24.205s. Lap times tumbled in the afternoon's hour-long practice session. A puncture robbed Wickens of valuable track time, limiting him to just 10 laps, but he repeated the morning's feat of finishing second fastest, this time behind Ireland's Adam Carroll.

"I think in general the results of day we were ok," Wickens reflected. "The only problem is we never really got to work on the car on old tires which is crucial for the race and in the official practice we had a puncture which put an early end to the day. It was frustrating because there was a half hour left in the session but we'll figure it out. It's a little frustrating as we're an hour behind and potentially a set of tires behind everybody else. Hopefully we can figure something out without wasting another set tomorrow. It's going to be tough but the team will be able to rebound!"

"We've hit the ground running," Team Manager Simon Cayzer commented. "The starting set-up was pretty good and the work the team put in preparing for here has been good but it was a day of mixed emotions really. We look quite good on the timing sheets but we've lost track time so we still have quite a bit of work we'd like to get through and a couple of problems with the car we'd like to iron out. We need to be a little bit creative with our plan for tomorrow so we don't hurt ourselves in qualifying and our overall strategy for the weekend. We're feeling relatively confident as we had the benefit of running Robert in both sessions, hopefully we're on target for a good result this weekend!"

Mark Gallagher, whose Status Grand Prix operation runs both A1 Team Canada and A1 Team Ireland, commented; "Robert did a great job under difficult circumstances, first with the driveshaft issue and then with the puncture during practice. It's very satisfying to see Canada right up there with its stable-mate Ireland, hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the weekend!"

Germany