Asian Motor Sports

A thrilling qualifying battle has set the stage for a dogfight in Sunday’s New Zealand A1 Grand Prix featuring German consistency, French flair and New Zealand determination.

New Zealand driver Jonny Reid will start from the second row of the grid after finishing third fastest in qualifying.

Germany’s championship leader, Nico Hulkenberg, took his first pole position of the series with pace-setting laps in the third and fourth of four 15-minute qualifying sessions for the top aggregate time of two minutes 28.218 seconds.

Beside him on the front row will be France’s Loic Duval, contesting his first A1 grand prix and impressive with how he has so quickly adapted to the demands of a “foreign” race car.

Reid was clearly disappointed not to be on the front row. He has started from pole in two races and from second spot in his three appearance this season.

He committed a costly mistake in the third session when his car clipped a kerb, causing it to oversteer for a split second.

Reid was the quickest in the morning’s warmup with a time of 1min 14.166sec but was unable to replicate that with his two best times of 1min 14.392sec and 1min 14.533sec in the afternoon’s qualifying.

“I would have liked to be on the front row but given some problems we had I’ll take it,” Reid said.

However, he can take consolation from the fact he will be starting behind Hulkenberg, who leads the series without having won a round, on the “clean” side of a circuit drivers say will be hard to overtake on.

It could be vital, giving Reid enough traction from the rolling start to beat the top two into the first corner in the 15-lap sprint race which begins at 11am before the standing start for the 50-lap feature race beginning at 3pm.

Friday’s top two in practice, Czech Republic’s Tomas Enge and India’s Narain Karthikeyan, both with Formula One experience, will start the race from 15th and 10th on the grid, respectively.

Hulkenberg said he expected some dust-ups at the first corner at the start of both races but he had the right side of the track which was the ideal line where there was no dirt.

“It was pretty slippery the first two qualifying sessions and it was like driving on ice because of the touring cars race before.”

The important thing was to get pole position because “overtaking will be very difficult and may be not possible so being at the front will be a big help,” he said.

Reid, who only came out in the final three minutes of each session for his attempts at a fast time, expressed disappointment he had not been able to dominate qualifying as he had done in the past.

“On the third qualifying session, I touched a kerb and in the final session my starter motor wouldn’t work (delaying me getting out).

“That put me under pressure and I didn’t run as smoothly as I could.”

Leading times from qualifying for the New Zealand A1 Grand Prix, the sixth round of the World Cup of Motorsport, at Taupo Motorsport Park (aggregate time from best two of four 15-minute sessions):-

Nico Hulkenberg (Germany) 2min 28.218sec 1, Loic Duval (France) 2:28.553 2, JONNY REID (NZ) 2:28.925 3, Jeroen Bleekemolen (Netherlands) 2:29.114 4, Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland) 2:29.614 5.

Grid positions: Germany 1, France 2, New Zealand 3, Netherlands 4, Switzerland 5, Britain 6, Canada 7, Malaysia 8, Ireland 9, India 10, South Africa 11, Brazil 12, Mexico 13, Italy 14, Czech Republic 15, United States 16, China 17, Indonesia 18, Singapore 19, Australia 20, Lebanon 21, Pakistan 22.