Brits on Pole

Swiss driver Neel Jani destroyed the opposition to score a double pole for A1GP’s Malaysian races, while Britain’s Oliver Jarvis managed a solid second and third.

Jarvis, fresh from his win in the F3 Macau Grand Prix, had been fastest in Friday practice but Jani, who impressed Brits on Pole’s writing team at the A1GP Silverstone test in August, was clearly the class of the field during qualification itself.

Jani, whose Champ Car season for PKV Racing was somewhat underwhelming, has form for his country at Sepang where the circuit suits his driving style – last season he took a win and a fourth place.

This year he was an unruffled fastest by a couple of tenths during qualifying for the sprint race, set a time good enough for pole early on in the feature race qualifying, then topped it with a last lap that destroyed the rest of field by almost a second.

“The car was perfect – we kept improving it, but even for me the last lap was a surprise,” he said. “I was trying to take it easy, so maybe that’s the secret to going faster!”

Oliver Jarvis – though overshadowed by Jani – could make a claim to be ‘best of the rest’, having taken second in the feature qualifying and third in the sprint.

Earlier, during Friday’s free practice, he had made the most of his final week classified as a rookie by dominating all three sessions.

He said then: “It was fairly fantastic. But tomorrow (Saturday) is when it really counts and the guys will sit down tonight and analyse the data. Hopefully we will come back even stronger.

“I would have liked a bit more pace early on in the session with the new tyres but I’m very happy with the lap time set at the end despite the age of the tyres.”

Driving for Ireland, Adam Carroll qualified 13th for the sprint and seventh for the feature race.

Sprint qualifying

Feature qualifying