SYDNEY, Feb 2: The action continued for A1 Team Pakistan on Saturday at the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport track here towards qualifying the car for the Sprint and Feature races. After a tough session the team had posted two 18th fastest laps to line up in this position for both races.

In a qualifying system unique to A1GP, the teams take part in four qualifying segments. The fastest lap from the first two segments sets the team’s position for the Sprint race and the fastest lap from the second two segments sets the grid slot for the Feature race.

While all the other A1GP teams waited until the last possible moment to set their flying laps, A1 Team Pakistan avoided the traffic and was the first team out on track in the first qualifying segment.

Having made a number of adjustments after the mornings qualifying session, Adam improved his time by nearly half a second to take provisional 17th place on the Sprint race grid. Determined to improve his time further, Adam pushed hard in the second segment and on new tyres went almost a second quicker.

However as the remaining A1 Teams took advantage of the improving track conditions and new tyres, Adam’s time left the team in 18th place – the position Pakistan will take for the 20 minutes Sprint race.

Focus returned to the Feature race as the third qualifying segment got underway. Pushing to find the limit on the changing track, Adam ran wide but managed to regain control to finish the lap with 17th fastest time. Taking to the track on new tyres for his final flying lap in the fourth qualifying segment, Adam was the first A1GP driver to set a time, taking advantage of the empty track. Although he also improved his time in this segment, the highly competitive field also dropped their lap times to leave Pakistan in 18th place.

Reflecting on qualifying, Adam said, “It was okay, although I thought we’d be a bit higher up, but it’s so close here, you make a tiny mistake and you fall down the order. I was a little disappointed with my second qualifying attempt for the Feature race; we’ll look at the data to see where I lost the time as we will be looking to improve further before tomorrow.

“We qualified ahead of India which is always satisfying, and we have got some good drivers behind us and some good drivers just in front of us. We always aim to make up places in the race and there’s a lot of racing ahead of us tomorrow when you can move up the field, so we’ll be aiming towards the top ten tomorrow.”—Agencies