Brazil

The sun blazed down on the Taupo circuit in New Zealand today as A1 Team Brasil hit the track for the first time of the weekend for round five of the 2007/08 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport. For the first time this season the Team utilised two drivers as it welcomed new rookie Clemente Faria Jr to join nominated race driver Sergio Jimenez.

Clemente got his first taste of an A1GP weekend today as he went out in this morning's rookie practice session. In the first 25-minute segment Clemente focused on learning the Taupo circuit and re-acquainting himself with the car, which he last drove at the pre-season driver shoot-out at Snetterton in the UK last August. He shifted his focus for the second segment to gather data for the Team before handing over the reins to Sergio for the afternoon's one-hour practice.

Taupo was another new circuit for Sergio as he hit the track this afternoon. As he is no longer eligible for the rookie practice sessions, the first aim of the afternoon was to get to grips with the technical 3.5km circuit. After that he began working with the Team to begin to find a good set-up for the car, and focus soon turned to finding a solution for the bumpy nature of the track. Although good progress was made throughout the hour, Sergio and the engineers will be looking to improve further in time for tomorrow's final one-hour practice session, before the afternoon's qualifying.

Clemente Faria Jr: "The track is very technical and I really enjoyed it. The sessions are not too long so I didn't have a lot of time to see the data and try to improve on my times. The car was good but I did not go to the limit so there is more to come. A lot of things are new to me but I just need to build my experience and I know we can improve in Australia because I will be more used to the car."

Sergio Jimenez: "It hasn't been bad today. I have been surprised by the circuit because it looked quite easy, but I have found a very tricky, bumpy track. The car was very nervous to begin with this afternoon and that made it difficult to drive. We changed a lot and the car kept improving during the session. We had some good sector times but didn't get a clean lap to put it all together; if we put our best splits together we would have done very well. So it wasn't a bad day but we still need to make improvements for tomorrow."

Emerson Fittipaldi: "Clemente did a good job this morning, he just needs to get adapt to the car because it's not easy to drive. This afternoon Sergio kept improving and did a very good job considering it is his first time here. He did some fast sectors but we didn't get one clean lap so tomorrow we should be running closer to the top, I think in the top six."

Canada

A1 Team Canada's Robert Wickens continued to make a name for himself in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport as the Toronto teen dominated Round 5's ‘Rookie-Only' practice session on Friday morning at New Zealand's Taupo Motorsports Park.

Wickens, turning his first career laps at the stunning 3.5km facility, blitzed the field of rookie drivers setting a lap of 1m17.070s, almost two tenths clear of second-placed John Martin debuting for A1 Team Australia. Canada maintained its front-running pace in the afternoon's hour-long official practice, Robert setting the seventh fastest lap time from the 22 competing nations.

With 21 laps under his belt from the morning's rookie session Wickens headed into the afternoon's practice armed with track knowledge and some set-up adjustments to try out ahead of tomorrow afternoon's qualifying runs. Logging 18 more tours, his fastest lap, a 1m16.065s, was just half a second off of A1 Team France's timesheet topping 1m15.545s, set courtesy of veteran Loic Duval.

"We definitely improved the car today," said Wickens after Friday's Taupo sessions. "We made a few changes from the rookie session that didn't quite work so when we started this afternoon on the new tires the car wasn't up to go P1again. As the session went on we really progressed and I set our best lap towards the end of the day which I'm really pleased about considering the tires were worn."

Robbie continued, "The Team did a great job, we're going to work on the car and hopefully get some good qualifying spots for Sunday's Sprint and Feature races. You don't get a break at this track, it's extremely physical but the grip levels are phenomenal. I'd heard that there wasn't too much grip here last year but whatever they've done, there's a ton of it now! It's going to be a physical race so whoever's been to the gym will make it to the end!"

Team Manager Simon Cayzer reflected on a solid opening day down-under. "We're at the right end of the grid," he commented. "We tried a few things, some worked and some didn't but we know the direction we have to take. We're reasonably happy with our qualifying set-up and there's a bit more work to do on the race set-up. In Zhuhai we were P2 but we didn't deliver in qualifying, there are no points for the rookie session and last time we ended the weekend with no points. I'll be happy with a decent score come Sunday evening."

Germany