08/10/2005
NEWS STORY
A1 Team Malaysia completed its second day of the A1 Grand Prix series in Germany, with a third practice session in the morning followed by qualifying, which saw driver, Alex Yoong, post 18th fastest time of the aggregated qualifying times.
Yoong and team mate, Fairuz Fauzy, who drove in practice yesterday afternoon, are experiencing the German track for the first time and have used the practice sessions to familiarise themselves with the track characteristics. Posting the 17th fastest times in the two free practice sessions yesterday and 18th fastest in morning practice today, A1 Team Malaysia maintained this pace in qualifying.
After the first two segments of qualifying, A1 Team Malaysia were 16th fastest overall, dropping to 23rd after the third, and bouncing back to 18th after the final segment.
Alex Yoong: "We tried a couple of changes for today in morning practice and then developed the car further during the session and we made good progress. We were still making changes during qualifying, so by the end of the session the car was much better. Unfortunately we only had the chance to do one qualifying run, losing the others to traffic problems, used tyres and an Italian driver who was a bit too aggressive coming out of the pits and put me on the grass. I'm quite positive looking towards tomorrow because we know which direction to take the car and make it better, so I think after tomorrow's warm up we should be able to run in the top ten."
Team Principal, Jack Cunningham: "We started this new series with a strong performance at Brands Hatch when we finished fifth, but this weekend is being much less kind to us! It's a new circuit for our drivers and this is reflected in the lap times. It's taken us a while to dial in the car, but we're confident that we're heading in the right direction and can improve our pace in the races tomorrow. The drivers have worked solidly to improve their performance as has the whole of the technical team. Lets see how tomorrow goes."