EuroSpeedway Lausitz, 7 October - The close competition between A1 Teams proved for an exciting start to the A1 Grand Prix of Nations, EuroSpeedway Lausitz, Germany as their positions continued to change throughout the two sessions.

A1 Team Great Britain recorded the fastest lap for the first official practice session with driver, Robbie Kerr saying: ‘Obviously it went well in the first session as I was quickest but we have still got work to do. It was good that the time was fast enough to put us third overall at the end of the day. For session 2 we worked on getting a balance on older tyres. We ended up sixth fastest in the second session which isn’t too bad but not where we want to be. We know what is making the difference now and so can move forward and tomorrow we are determined to stay at the top of the time sheets.’

The fastest lap in the second session was recorded by A1 Team France’s Nicolas Lapierre. He commented: ‘It has been a good day. This morning was difficult because the team has never been here and nor have I. This made it difficult to find some marks but the team did a really good job this afternoon. We had a small problem on the front wing so had to change it and also a problem with the brakes, but these were very small problems. So far so good, we have to keep pushing tomorrow morning and then we will go for qualifying.’

Recording the second fastest lap over all A1 Team Ireland’s Ralph Firman, who will make his A1GP race debut this weekend, said: ‘It was okay but on this circuit there are no quick corners, they are just very, very long corners and we are struggling with oversteer. It is nice to be back in a single seater although it felt a bit alien to start with. I am slowly getting back to being used to driving a single seater after not driving one properly for two years. I think everyone has now done more days testing than I have so now are ahead of us. It was a good start but there is more to come.’

Official Practice Session 1 (13.00 - 14.00)

A1 Team Driver Time No. Laps
1 Great Britain Robbie Kerr 1.34.675 19
2 France Nicholas Lapierre 1.34.698 22
3 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 1.34.784 23
4 Germany Timo Scheider 1.35.043 21
5 Switzerland Neel Jani 1.35.063 25
6 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 1.35.125 17
7 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 1.35.155 19
8 Czech Republic Tomas Enge 1.35.321 22
9 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 1.35.543 20
10 Canada Sean McIntosh 1.35.614 28
11 USA Scott Speed 1.35.631 18
12 Ireland Ralph Firman 1.35.795 22
13 New Zealand Jonny Reid 1.35.961 23
14 Pakistan Adam Khan 1.36.000 21
15 Portugal Alvaro Parente 1.36.198 19
16 Mexico David Martinez 1.36.313 23
17 Malaysia Alex Yoong 1.36.723 20
18 Austria Mathias Lauda 1.37.012 11
19 Japan Hideki Noda 1.37.125 21
20 South Africa Tomas Scheckter 1.37.408 11
21 India Armaan Ebrahim 1.37.739 24
22 Lebanon Khalil Beschir 1.37.788 18
23 Australia Christian Jones 1.37.913 22
24 China Tengyi Jiang 1.38.594 21

Official Practice session 2 (16.00 - 17.00)

A1 Team Driver Time No. Laps
1 France Nicolas Lapierre 1.34.150 18
2 Ireland Ralph Firman 1.34.525 25
3 Germany Timo Scheider 1.34.722 24
4 Netherlands Jos Verstappen 1.34.783 22
5 Indonesia Ananda Mikola 1.34.788 12
6 Great Britain Robbie Kerr 1.34.800 20
7 Switzerland Neel Jani 1.34.864 21
8 USA Scott Speed 1.34.932 20
9 Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 1.34.988 23
10 Italy Enrico Toccacelo 1.35.047 19
11 Canada Sean McIntosh 1.35.054 22
12 Czech Republic Tomas Enge 1.35.375 24
13 New Zealand Jonny Reid 1.35.390 25
14 Pakistan Adam Khan 1.35.877 11
15 Portugal Alvaro Parente 1.36.057 17
16 Mexico David Martinez 1.36.167 23
17 Malaysia Faruz Fazuy 1.36.242 19
18 Japan Hideki Noda 1.36.284 25
19 China Tengyi Jiang 1.37.231 28
20 India Karun Chandhok 1.37.452 21
21 South Africa Tomas Scheckter 1.37.497 12
22 Austria Mathias Lauda 1.37.571 22
23 Australia Christian Jones 1.37.632 24

The times for A1 Team Lebanon were disallowed following a regulation infringement in which the Team failed to notify A1 Grand Prix of a change to the nominated driver.