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Willi Weber’s A1 Team Germany scored its fourth pole position in total in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport when Michael Ammermüller recorded the team’s best qualifying result of the 2007/2008 season in the fourth round in China. The 21-year old racing driver from Pocking will start the sprint race at Zhuhai from pole position. Claiming fifth position in the second half of the qualifying session, he will start the feature race from thrid row.
Already in the first of four qualifying segments, Michael Ammermüller impressed the team by setting the second fastest time (1m23.790s), a mere 0.115s slower than Ireland’s Adam Carroll. In the second outing on the 4.3 kilometre circuit in the south of China, Ammermüller improved his time by more than 5 tenths of a second. His lap of 1m23.203s was 0.222s faster than that of Swiss driver Neel Jani, earning the German driver his first career pole position in A1GP for Sunday’s sprint race.
The following two segments in the combined qualifying session determined the grid for the feature race. Already in the first outing, Michael Ammermüller set the best time of 1m24.093s on old tyres, just 0.007s ahead of Great Britain’s Oliver Jarvis. In the second outing, the Bavarian improved his time by 0.203s, but his opponents were even better. The teams from Switzerland, Great Britain, India and France claimed the first four places on the grid ahead of A1 Team Germany.
After sixth and second positions at Zandvoort, seventh and ninth at Brno and fourth and third at Sepang, the result obtained in China marks the best average qualifying performance for A1 Team Germany in the current season. In the past season, the team has achieved three pole positions in qualifying.
Michael Ammermüller:
"It’s good to start the sprint race from pole position. Already the first outing went well. When I came back into the pits, we slightly changed something on the car. The DS Motorsport mechanics did a great job so we improved our lap time considerably in the second session and claimed first place. For both segments, we used new tyres. On old tyres, I finished first again in the third session. For the last attempt, the team bolted on a set of fresh rubber. I pushed too hard, however, so my corner exits were too slow that’s why we ended up fifth on the grid for the feature race. But I believe that the most important thing is to start the sprint race from pole position during the rolling start. By contrast, the standing start in the feature race as well as the pit stops might open good opportunities to overtake.”
Starting grid sprint race:
1 Germany, 1m23.203s; 2 Switzerland, 1m23.425s; 3 Ireland, 1m23.675s; 4 China, 1m23.784s; 5 Great Britain, 1m23.850s; 6 Czech Republic, 1m23.921s; 7 France, 1m23.928s; 8 Netherlands, 1m23.965s; 9 India, 1m23.972s; 10 Canada, 1m24.029s.
Starting grid feature race:
1 Switzerland, 1m23.465s; 2 Great Britain, 1m23.650s; 3 India, 1m23.767s; 4 France, 1m23.784s; 5 Germany, 1m23.890s; 6 China, 1m23.930s; 7 USA, 1m23.992s; 8 Malaysia, 1m24.036s; 9 South Africa, 1m24.100s; 10 New Zealand, 1m24.114s.
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