Nicolas Lapierre won an incident packed A1 Grand Prix of Nations at Eastern Creek on Sunday afternoon.
The Team France star had earlier triumphed in the sprint race before taking double victory with another win in the feature event.
However Lapierre’s job wasn’t quite as straightforward as it had been during the sprint, with Portugal’s Alvaro Parente proving a serious threat.
As the lights dimmed at the start of the race Lapierre got bogged down while Parente shot off the line and into a comfortable lead by turn one.
Lapierre wasn’t about to get his Portuguese rival get away and piled the pressure on the leading car during the opening laps.
Parente’s luck soon turned however when he was called to the pits for a drive-through penalty.
Race stewards judged that he had jumped the start and thus would be penalised, handing the lead back to Lapierre.
The Frenchman quickly settled into a devastating pace that saw him record the fastest lap and a new lap record of Eastern Creek.
However his march to victory wasn’t as devastating as it may have been, with three safety cars interrupting the race.
The first was caused by Salvador Duran (Mexico), who found himself in the gravel for a second time.
Duran came together with Russia’s Roman Rusinov leaving both cars off the track at turn two.
At the sime time Stephan Simpson (South Africa) clouted a wall heading into turn eight after, he later claimed, being bauked by a rival.
Tomas Enge (Czech Republic) and Mathius Lauda (Austria) were the cause of the second delay when they, like Duran, both paid their second visit to the turn two gravel trap after clashing on the circuit.
The safety car was called on a third and final time when Hayanari Shimoda had a sickening shunt into the turn one barrier and destroyed the Team Japan entry.
His car was destroyed, ripped in half, after coming off the circuit at high speed and running into the unprotected concrete wall.
The race was restarted on the 33rd circuit with two minutes left in the hour, meaning the field could complete just two more laps.
Lapierre wasn’t challenged, and the second-placed British car of Robbie Kerr was comoftable as well.
Jos Verstappen mounted a huge challenge for third position but in the end the Netherlands entry fell short of the podium with Switzerland’s Neel Jani bravely holding on.
Alex Yoong secured fifth for Malaysia, ahead of local favourite Will Davison in the Australia entry.
Parente recovered to seventh, and Michael Devaney crossed the line eighth before being demoted to 14th by race stewards after being adjudged to have passed a car on a restart before crossing the line.
Devaney’s demotion saw Jonny Reid (New Zealand) moved up to eighth, Nelson Piquet (Brazil) ninth, and Bryan Herta (USA) tenth.
* A1 Injury. Japan’s Hayanari Shimoda was taken by helicopter to a local Sydney hospital after a massive shunt during the A1 Grand Prix of Nations Australia feature race.
Shimoda came off the circuit at high speed heading into turn one and went careering into an unprotected concrete barrier.
The car was ripped in half and it took over 10 minutes for safety crews to remove the driver from the car.
* Safety sting. Nelson Piquet was one driver that was punished by the safety cars during the A1 Grand Prix of Nations Australia.
The Brazilian was running third before electing to make an early stop on lap six and thus moved down the order to 15th.
The safety car was soon called upon (see above report) and Piquet’s rivals were able to pit unpunished while he languished in the depths of the field.
He set about making an impressive recover – which included the race’s second fastest lap – but two further safety car periods further impeded his recovery.
In the end Piquet finished ninth, with two championship points. Brazil now stand 19 points behind France in second place overall in the chase for the A1 title.
Feature race classification:
01. France
02. Great Britain
03. Switzerland
04. Netherlands
05. Malaysia
06. Australia
07. Portugal
08. Ireland
09. New Zealand
10. Brazil
11. USA
12. Pakistan
13. Lebanon
14. India
Retirements
15. Canada
16. Japan
17. China
18. Austria
19. Czech Republic
20. Russia
21. Mexico
22. Germany
23. Italy
24. South Africa
Written: Sun, 06 Nov 2005 05:44:50
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