A1 GP: Morning times from Paul Ricard

[mabs_nsx]

http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=25604

Australia is 5th fastest

[Net-Ranger]

Salvador Duran on the wheel for Mexico, pretty good time...

[Bruno_Lamy]

Excellent time for Álvaro Parente!!!

He's very very fast! If you are following the F3 British Championship, you know that for sure!!!And it's only the 2nd time he's driving it! GO ÁLVARO

[cos]

Test times from the whole day. USA fastest with their stars'n'stripes liveried car.

[SALEEN S7R]

Not bad times, although 9 seconds off roughly what the GP2 cars were doing earlier this year. I hope theres a lot more to come from the A1 GP machines though.

[JohnMiller]

Originally Posted by SALEEN S7R

Not bad times, although 9 seconds off roughly what the GP2 cars were doing earlier this year.

Are they on the same layout?

[Kicking-back]

Not sure - always difficult to know with Ricard

[jondownunder]

Highly unlikely that the A1GP cars are on the same track configuration as GP2 used if there is 9 secs difference... unless of course it rained.

[strider]

They were on the High Tech test track, which suggests it was not one of the faster versions.

[Mr Jinxx]

The track configuration is different to the GP2 track. There are roughly 300 different configurations available at Paul Ricard ... what a fantastic testing facility.

OK, maqybe not 300 ... I've been told a million times not to exaggerate.

Weather was bright dry warm (28) and sunny. There was the option of using the boost button on the cars - not all teams chose to use it, preferring instead to concentrate on core setups.

USA livery looks good. Piquet and Carrapatosa (sp?) out for Brazil ... not sure of their agenda. Piquet appeared to use the 2 available new sets of tyres in the morning, Carappatosa got the old ones. Keke Rosberg was around.

Not one single breakdown all day, which I continue to find unbelievable! Bodes well.

I think it was Karun Chandhok driving for India? He said the cars were really good to drive, although he hadn't ever driven F three grand. He can out-cool the best of us.

[nkfan]

@ Mr Jinx

Karun did race in F3. In 2002, 2003 and 2004.

he raced few races in Nissan World series in 2004 and currently he is racing in Renault world series.

Like u said ..i hope india was one of the teams just playing with setups and not concentrating on laptimes. Because i expected Chandhok to be better

[Mr Jinxx]

We know Karun. It's early days for everyone. The quickest guys so far are the ones who basically have been sitting in a car every weekend. His terminology was the point of the quote, which was great!

[Oaksnaf]

Even with his added time in the car Christian Jones was beaten by Will Power and Will Davison in the times. I really do hope they come to realise Power and Davison are the better choice for the job than Jones.
But im gunning for Davison.

Piquet was quite quick for Brazil, as was Speed.... dialed into these cars very quickly. And gee Yoong is doing (alright) for himself beating Verstappen.

[SALEEN S7R]

According to a user on the "other" forum if you work out the Speed quoted against the times shown it works out to 2.353 miles, the full circut. Now I dont know 100% for sure but I think the GP2 cars used the full circuit too, just like the F1 teams do. If thats the case the top A1 GP cars are 9.3 seconds slower than the top GP2 cars, at least for now. The A1 GP cars havent had much testing after all, id expect the real differnce to be around 4-5 seconds a lap.

[MickAU]

Jones didn't drive - he and hacket are driving tomorrow according to the press release i saw this morning