Hinchcliffe Powers A1 Team Canada to Top-Five in Qualifying (W)

Canadian James Hinchcliffe Powers A1 Team Canada to Top-Five Qualifying Slot

Qualifying, Round 2/12 - A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, Brno, Czech Republic

Brno, Czech Republic (October 07, 2006) - Toronto's James Hinchcliffe powered A1 Team Canada to its highest ever Sprint race qualifying slot today, fifth place, ahead of Round 2 of the 2006-07 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport, hosted Sunday 8th October at the 5.41 km Auto Motodrom, Brno in the Czech Republic.

Having debuted for A1 Team Canada in last weekend's opening round at Circuit Park Zandvoort in Holland, where 23 nations lined up to compete against each other in identical 550 bhp, V8-powered open-wheel A1GP racing cars, Hinchcliffe (19) proved himself to be a quick learner as he immediately dialed himself in to A1GP's unique aggregate qualifying system, where each driver has four timed runs with the fastest two laps combined to set the grid order for Sunday's Sprint race.

Straight out on fresh rubber, the Canadian entry was firmly planted in the top-ten and James duly powered the car further up the order as he utilized three new sets of tires over his four hot laps, eventually placing fifth overall at the end of the session with an aggregate time of 3 m 31.673 s. Pole winners A1 Team New Zealand (Jonny Reid) are joined on the front row tomorrow by Round 1 Feature race winners A1 Team Germany (Niko Hülkenberg).

James Hinchcliffe: "Well I hadn't done a new tire run all weekend prior to qualifying, having used old rubber for the rookie session Friday, so we decided to go out on a fresh set for my first flying run to see where the car's balance was. It was pretty good but we still had a few things to work on and ended up getting quicker and quicker with each run. By my fourth and final run we had a really good car, it was so much better than I was expecting to be honest.

"Considering how Friday went, where we struggled throughout the day, fifth on the grid for Sunday's Sprint race is a great result. We're looking forward to productive Sprint and Feature races here in Brno to open our points account. Hopefully things bode well as we had a good first session this morning working on long runs on old tires."

A1GP Round 2 Qualifying - Aggregate time from two fastest laps

1	New Zealand	Jonny Reid	3:30.053
2	Germany	Niko Hülkenberg	3:30.524
3	Malaysia	Alex Yoong	3:31.051
4	China	Congfu Cheng	3:31.531
5	CANADA	James Hinchcliffe	3:31.673
6	USA	Philip Giebler	3:31.743
7	Czech Republic	Tomas Enge	3:32.016
8	France	Nicolas Lapierre	3:32.227
9	Switzerland	Sebastien Buemi	3:32.774
10	Great Britain	Robbie Kerr	3:32.787

Sunday's 20-minute Sprint race, featuring a 
rolling start, begins at 11 am local time (5 am 
EST) with the 70-minute Feature race, complete 
with mandatory pit-stop, starting at 3 pm (9 am 
EST) local time.  Sunday's A1GP races can be 
viewed live online, or on demand later, at 
www.a1gp.com