Liuzzi Claims Italy's First Pole Position in Portugal

Algarve, April 11, 2009: Round Six of the 2008/09 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport continued this afternoon with Vitantonio Liuzzi claiming Italy’s first ever A1GP pole position in the Sprint race in tomorrow’s Vodafone A1GP Algarve, Portugal. Robert Doornbos took his first pole position for A1 Team Netherlands in Feature race qualifying.

Despite both segments of Sprint race qualfying being interupted by red flags, Liuzzi timed his run to perfection. Making full use of the one PowerBoost lap available to him he claimed pole poistion for A1 Team Italy on his A1GP debut with a time of 1-minute 30.875-seconds. The Netherlands kept its practice form together in qualifying with Robert Doornbos second on the grid for the Sprint while A1 Team Ireland’s Adam Carroll made up for a problematic day yesterday by claiming third.

Doornbos went one better in Feature race qualifying to claim his first pole position of the series with a 1-minute 30.415-second lap. Ireland will line up alongside him on the front row with Switzerland’s Neel Jani in third, recording his only laptime of the session after his car stopped while out on track during Sprint qualifying. South Africa’s Adrian Zaugg scored the teams best qualifying result of the season to start fourth.

Local Portuguese driver Filipe Albuquerque will start fifth and seventh for his home event.