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New Zealand has overcome debilitating gearbox problems to post competitive qualifying times for tomorrow's 3 rd Round races at the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in Malaysia.
Despite being starved of practice time, New Zealand driver Jonny Reid pushed into the third row for the opening Sprint Race, qualifying 6 th and then battled into 10th spot for the Feature Race.
The gearbox problems struck when Black Beauty could only manage five laps in the morning's official practice session, plummeting from 4 th fastest yesterday to 16th fastest today. Frantic work in the garage wasn't enough to get the car back out during the one-hour session.
"It put us at a distinct disadvantage," said A1 Team.NZL spokesman Bob McMurray. "We couldn't test the repair work or finetune the set-up before qualifying started and Jonny cooled his heels in the garage when he could've been clocking up valuable track time.
"This circuit is tricky to get the optimum set up for the fast and long straights and then the technical style of the many corners, so track time here is vital!
"You actually wish it was a nightmare so there was a chance to wake up and have everything be back to normal."
Swiss driver Neel Jani was the star of qualifying, propelling Switzerland into pole position for both races with successive scorching lap records.
New Zealand tops the championship table with 37 points, just one point ahead of South Africa with Great Britain and the Netherlands third equal a further five points back.
The 20-minute Sprint Race starts tomorrow afternoon at 4pm with the 70 minute Feature Race taking place from 8pm tomorrow night.
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