A1 Team Brazil was on track today as preparations began for round three of the 2008/09 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. Felipe Guimarães was on duty for the Brazilian squad, using all available practice time as he is still eligible for the rookie sessions.
Felipe had his first taste of the Sepang track this morning in the two half hour rookie practice. The aim of the session was for the 17-year-old Brazilian to get to grips with the circuit, and to begin work on set-up on Brazil’s A1GP Powered by Ferrari car. Unfortunately the team suffered electrical problems which blighted progress and limited Felipe to just seven laps in the first session.
In the afternoon’s one hour practice, which saw all the nominated race drivers take to the track, Felipe headed out fourteen minutes into the session. Throughout the hour he completed 14 laps of testing, but the team struggled and is now investigating a potential technical problem which affected the practice performance.
Tomorrow will see all the teams complete one final hour of practice in the morning, before the all important qualifying sessions in the afternoon, which will determine the grid line-up for Sunday’s sprint and feature races.
Felipe Guimarães: “This morning I really didn’t get to run because of the problems so the first time I ran really was this afternoon. Unfortunately we have a problem, which we also experienced at the Silverstone test, with a big oversteer issue after braking. There isn’t anything wrong with our set-up and we have tried several things to solve it without a resolution so we are of the thinking now that there is a problem with the car itself. We are looking into every area tonight and I hope things will be better for us tomorrow.”
Fernando Paiva, Team Principal: “We lost a lot of time with the electrical problem in the rookie session and had more problems this afternoon. We’re currently looking into the car in great detail as we believe there is a fundamental issue – we did not have set-up problems so we are trying to find the reason that we struggled. Hopefully this can all be resolved for tomorrow.”
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