A1 GRAND PRIX - 05.11.2006
Round 3 A1GP Beijing, Beijing

It all turned out fine in the end

Free practice and qualifying
When the cars went out for the first time on Friday for free practice, it soon turned out that there were some problems with the circuit. The coarse was set out on the parking lot and access roads to an exhibition centre and was being used for the very first time. The hairpin proved to be too tight for the cars to negotiate without great difficulty and so a solution had to be found first of all for this problem. Another problem occurred whit the manhole covers needing welding down as they could and in the case of the Team Netherlands car did destroy the underside of the car and thus causing an oil leak and subsequently causing the engine to blow up. There was no real testing done by the teams as Friday afternoon was spent by the organisers looking at different solutions for the problems.

On Saturday, about 35 minutes into the sole free practice session it turned out that the manhole covers needed to be welding down completely as some were still coming loose and potentially still could cause engine blow ups.

There was to be no more running on Saturday and it was decided to also cancell qualifying altogether and to draw up the grid with the times as they stood when the free practice session was interrupted. This left Team China down in 15th place as Frankie had been in traffic for a couple of laps when the session was stopped and with this being a new road circuit times were as always still coming down all the time. So if you hadn’t had a clear lap at the time of the interruption you could find yourself a lot further down the order than you should be. This is exactly what happened to us.

Sunday, warm-up
The fact that the pace of the car and driver was much better than P15 was proven in the warm-up session on Sunday morning when Frankie was constantly running in the Top 5-times.

Race 1
Having to start way down in P15 and with the start given behind the safety car (no accidents thus no positions gained) it was always going to be difficult to climb up the order. In fact one incident occurred involving 2 cars which caused a very long safety car procedure and which moved us up 2 places to P13.

Race 2
The feature race for Team China came to an end at about mid-distance when Frankie crashred out with a suspension failure which was caused probably by a first impact on the rear suspension when Frankie was hit from behind by Team Indonesia under braking for the hairpin. Having to go very hard over the kerbs at the chicane in order to be on the pace the suspension finally broke some laps later.

Nevertheless, the feature race, although it was interrupted several times by the safety car, turned out to be quite interesting, especially towards the end when first leaders Team Netherlands made a mistake and spun out and moments later new leader Team Germany retired with gearbox problems. Victory thus went to Team Italy. Interestingly enough, Team Australia finished 3rd although they had only qualified P14 for race 1 and had been holding Frankie up in the first part of the race. Once again, in the A1feature race anything can happen and especially on a street circuit this is always the case.

All in all, a sense of relief went through the paddock at the end of the race as everybody was happy for the Chinese organisers and A1GP that we were able to put on the show they deserve for all of the effort that was put in by them now and has been in the past and will be in the future.