Shanghai: Team Great Britain qualifying report

In his first event in an A1 car Darren Manning was on a charge for his qualifying sessions, taking eight tenths of a second over the competition on his first run. He maintained provisional pole for the next two sessions but in the last seconds of ...

In his first event in an A1 car Darren Manning was on a charge for his qualifying sessions, taking eight tenths of a second over the competition on his first run. He maintained provisional pole for the next two sessions but in the last seconds of the fourth segment Alex Yoong for A1 Team Malaysia put in a stunning time to rob A1 Team Great Britain of a second pole position of the season. A1Team.GBR will start on the front row of the grid for the third time in 2005/06 and Darren is optimistic about prospects for the team in the races tomorrow.

Darren Manning: "The car was good. I would have liked to make some changes in the qualifying session but it's difficult when you're fast and you're trying to hold onto a pole rather than challenging. We left it the same throughout the session. I think I probably could have just nipped Alex on that last run but I didn't quite put the perfect lap together.

"I'm happy with the front row. I can race from there. For qualifying we wanted to be in a position that we could win the race from so I think we should be alright. I haven't done a standing start for a quite a while with racing in America but I've been practicing and it's been going well.

"Rolling starts should be fine and especially restarts because I'm used to them so hopefully when that green flag drops in the Sprint Race I can get in front pretty early."