February 24, 2008	Sunday	Safar 16, 1429

DURBAN, Feb 23: A1 Team Pakistan driver Adam Khan put up a strong performance on Saturday around at A1GP South Africa when the 22 year-old racer battled against injury to record his team’s second best qualifying result of the season.

He will now line up 14th for tomorrow’s Feature race. The team will start the Sprint race from 15th place.

The demanding Durban track served up its usual challenges today, with former F1 driver Narain Karthikeyan crashing out in the Indian car just two laps into this morning’s practice session. A number of other cars followed, leading to four red flag periods in total. Adam continued to make progress and by the end of the one hour session, was 15th, ahead of India, Australia and Mexico and several others.

As a tight and twisting street circuit, the Durban race puts the A1GP drivers under immense physical pressure. As one of the tallest drivers in the series, Adam has little space inside the confined space of the A1GP car cockpit This, together with the very bumpy surface of the Durban race track resulted in severely bruised and swollen elbows for the Pakistan driver.

Having received medical attention, the 22 year-old carried on regardless into the afternoon’s qualifying session.

By the end of the segment, Pakistan were in provisional fourth place on the Sprint race grid. With just one more flying lap in the second qualifying segment to better their times, the 22 A1GP cars were out on track again. With the pressure on, all the teams were pushing hard and by the end of the segment, Pakistan had set the 15th fastest time.—Agencies