A1GP

Sepang: Team Japan practice notes

Sepang circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- Hayanari Shimoda returned to A1 Grand Prix competition after a huge accident in the previous round in Australia left the young Japanese driver concussed and in hospital for two days. Making a speedy ...

Published: Nov 19, 2005, 10:03 PM

Copy link

Share on Viber

Add as a preferred source

Sepang circuit, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- Hayanari Shimoda returned to A1 Grand Prix competition after a huge accident in the previous round in Australia left the young Japanese driver concussed and in hospital for two days. Making a speedy recovery, Shimoda competed in the European Le Mans Series last weekend before travelling to Malaysia for this fifth round of the Series. In the first two practice session, Shimoda finished 15th fastest in the morning and 14th fastest in the afternoon.

Hayanari Shimoda: 1st session - 15th 1'58.324secs 2nd session - 14th 1'57.929secs
"It was fine for me out there today. I spent the time getting used to the car set up and continuing to learn about the car. The times are very close, so I feel we're on the pace and can improve further tomorrow. I know the track from my GT racing experience, which is a help to me. I hope we can get a top ten qualifying slot tomorrow."

Malcolm Swetnam (Team Manager, A1 Japan): "Good effort from Shimoda, with no ill effects, a brand new car, with no problems - a good start to the weekend. The new car and new engine had to go through a structured programme of a 1 lap run, then 5 lap run so we had to do that. We're also into a tyre conservation situation which all the teams are into, because of the way in which the tyres are being issued so we have done all our running on one set of tyres today and will continue on this set of tyres tomorrow morning. It's a little bit of a worry because the performance of the tyres degrades and you don't know whether the car is right for new tyres but we're reasonably confident that it is."

-team japan-

We want your opinion!

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?

Take our 5 minute survey.

- The Motorsport.com Team

Read and post comments

Share Or Save This Story

Copy link

Share on Viber

Previous article Sepang: Teams nominate drivers

Next article Eastern Creek: Race one report

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

View More & Comment

Latest news

Spy shots of 2027 NASCAR Ford Mustang testing at Charlotte, but what's different?

NASCAR Cup

NAS NASCAR Cup

Charlotte II

2 h

Spy shots of 2027 NASCAR Ford Mustang testing at Charlotte, but what's different?

Five key takeaways from F1's big African Grand Prix reveal in Rwanda

Formula 1

F1 Formula 1 3 h

Five key takeaways from F1's big African Grand Prix reveal in Rwanda

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

Indy NXT

IndL Indy NXT 4 h

Niels Koolen makes switch to Abel Motorsports ahead of 2027 Indy NXT campaign

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

GT World Challenge Europe Endurance

WCEE GT World Challenge Europe Endurance 5 h

GT World Challenge Portimao: All you need to know about season finale featuring Max Verstappen

Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.

From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.

You have 2 options:

Become a subscriber.
Disable your adblocker.

Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here

Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page

Manage Alerts