Having flown overnight from a GP2 test at the Paul Ricard track in the South of France, A1 Team South Africa’s main driver, Adrian Zaugg made his long awaited return to A1GP at his home race in Durban, South Africa this morning after a three race break as he recovered from surgery on a forearm injury.

Adrian flew in this morning and headed straight to the track for the first practice session of the Durban race weekend. Despite suffering a broken drive shaft on the first lap out, A1 Team South Africa recorded the 13th fastest lap of the morning session and 10th fastest lap of the afternoon session.

‘It felt as if I arrived just five minutes before the session, but I had enough time to start on time and get prepared in the car so that was okay. It was just a drive shaft that broke on my first lap but in motorsport things like that happen. Then I pushed a bit too much later, missed my braking and hit the wall, so we had to retire and I was only able to do one lap in the rookie session. The track is really fantastic and lots of fun to drive. It is a bit bumpy but everybody has the same problems and so this is not something I need to worry about’, Zaugg commented.

A1 Team France’s Loic Duval set the fastest time of both sessions, putting his experience of street circuits at Pau, Monaco and Macau to good use. Commenting on the Durban track, Duval said: ‘This morning I spent learning the track and this afternoon unfortunately we had some mechanical problems at the beginning and many red flags, but the car is quite good. I didn’t do a really, really good lap but the time looks fine so it was okay. Now we have to take care about the German, South African and New Zealand teams, but everything is all right. Durban looks a really nice track and it was good fun to drive today.’

Unfortunately the final practice of the day was cut short when a small section of track kerbing at turn seven broke up. The organisers are now repairing the area and foresee no further problems over the weekend. After a further free practice session at 11.00 in the morning, Qualifying for the Sprint race will take place with four 15 minute sessions between 14.15 and 15.30.

Official Practice Session 1 – Rookie drivers and developing nations only

	A1 Team	Driver	Time	No. Laps
1	France	Loic Duval	1.19.836	12
2	India	Narain Karthikeyan	1.20.120	24
3	China	Ho Pin Tung	1.20.746	26
4	Switzerland	Marcel Fassler	1.20.924	24
5	Italy	Michele Rugolo	1.20.947	24
6	Netherlands	Renger van der Zande	1.20.966	23
7	USA	Jonathan Summerton	1.21.097	22
8	Singapore	Christian Murchison	1.21.409	18
9	Great Britain	Oliver Jarvis	1.21.443	23
10	Ireland	Richard Lyons	1.21.448	18
11	Portugal	Alvaro Parente	1.21.550	7
12	Australia	Ian Dyk	1.21.678	19
13	South Africa	Adrian Zaugg	1.21.684	2
14	Canada	Kevin Lacroix	1.21.943	26
15	Czech Republic	Filip Salaquarda	1.22.924	14
16	Lebanon	Allam Khodair	1.23.066	16
17	Indonesia	Moreno Soeprapto	1.23.809	16
18	Brazil	Luiz Razia	1.27.261	5
19	Pakistan	Nur Ali	1.27.264	16

A1 Team Portugal were permitted to take part in one of the two sectors that made up practice session one to shakedown their car.

Official Practice session 2 (14.00 – 15.00)

	A1 Team	Driver	Time	No. Laps
1	France	Loic Duval	1.18.620	5
2	Ireland	Richard Lyons	1.19.179	11
3	Germany	Nico Hulkenberg	1.19.350	10
4	Czech Republic	Tomas Enge	1.19.358	6
5	Netherlands	Jeroen Bleekemolen	1.19.441	14
6	Switzerland	Neel Jani	1.19.583	14
7	Indonesia	Ananda Mikola	1.19.739	14
8	India	Narain Karthikeyan	1.19.772	15
9	China	Ho Pin Tung	1.19.779	7
10	South Africa	Adrian Zaugg	1.19.888	13
11	Brazil	Bruno Junqueira	1.19.902	14
12	Portugal	Alvaro Parente	1.19.918	5
13	New Zealand	Matt Halliday	1.19.932	14
14	Malaysia	Alex Yoong	1.20.154	14
15	USA	Jonathan Summerton	1.20.288	15
16	Italy	Enrico Toccacelo	1.20.308	15
17	Australia	Karl Reindler	1.20.809	8
18	Mexico	Salvador Duran	1.20.828	11
19	Canada	James Hinchcliffe	1.21.137	13
20	Lebanon	Allam Khodair	1.21.240	14
21	Great Britain	Robbie Kerr	1.21.256	9
22	Pakistan	Nur Ali	1.24.317	16
23	Singapore	Christian Murchison	-	-

A1 Team Singapore did not set a time in the afternoon practice session as they continued to work on the car after an incident in the morning session where the car sustained damage after spinning off and hitting the wall.