Lapierre maintains French hopes
Nicolas Lapierre kept up France’s domination of the new A1 Grand Prix series by taking pole position at Eastern Creek in Australia.
France have won four of the six races so far and Lapierre’s efforts today in qualifying set them on course to add to that tally.
The GP2 regular clocked a best lap of one minute 18.150 seconds on his way to the fastest aggregate time, giving him pole position for tomorrow’s sprint race.
His combined time was 0.490secs faster than his nearest challenger, Portugal’s reigning British Formula Three champion Alvaro Parente.
France have alternated drivers between Lapierre and Alexandre Premat, putting both men under extra pressure to maintain their successful streak.
Lapierre said: “We did enough to laps to get the time we wanted, we wanted to save tyres for tomorrow. So far so good, we have had a very good weekend so far, we have a good car for tomorrow on some new tyres.
“There is pressure on me and I have to keep pushing because I want to hand the car back to Alex on top of the championship in the next race.”
Switzerland’s Neel Jani, who will be Red Bull Racing’s test driver in Formula One next year, continued his encouraging form to take third, while Nelson Piquet Jr was fourth for Brazil.
Piquet and his team are second in the championship, eight points behind Brazil, but he was not able to repeat his practice domination and will start race one tomorrow from the second row.
Robbie Kerr offered Great Britain hope of a change in fortunes by claiming fifth place, one ahead of Michael Devaney in the Irish car.
Kerr, one of three British Formula Three champions in the field, has suffered bad luck since the season started at Brands Hatch, leaving Britain 35 points off the lead in ninth in the championship.
He hopes for better this weekend, though, and said: “Fifth is a good starting spot and we can do something from there so I’m looking forward to it.
“For qualifying we were consistent but didn’t get that couple of 10ths of a second that we needed to pip Brazil and Portugal.
“It’s going to be hard work tomorrow and difficult to overtake but we’ve got a good race set-up and we’ll take it from there.”
Scott Speed, who will race in Formula One for the Squadra Toro Rosso team next year, continued his A1 struggles, qualifying down in 22nd for the United States.
