Team France wins feature race; Team Netherlands 9th

Published on 12 December 2005 by Thorsten Hendriks

Team France have won their night A1GP race, in front of Great Britain, South Africa, Portugal and China. South Africa won their first podium and China gained their first point of this season. Jos Verstappen had a good start and drove to position four, but unfortunately he was served with a drive through penalty (speeding in pitlane) and still managed to finish ninth.

Team Great Britain is leading the race for a long time but eventually Nicolas Lapierre (FR) managed to overtake him. After two laps Jos has gained 2 places. After the retirements of Malaysia and Brazil he is 7th in lap 5, with 7 powerboosts left. When Jos uses one of the powerboosts to overtake Canada and Indonesia spins off track he ends up on 5th position.

The Indonesian car causes a safetycar situation. Jos goes into the pits, together with Portugal. After the safety car has gone back in Jos is 8th and is determined to make his way forward again. After several laps he is driving behind Team USA and uses a powerboost to overtake, in which he succeeds. Jos is fourth behind Great Britain, France and South Africa.

But then it appears at the bottom of our tv screen 'Drive through penalty Team NED for speeding in pitlane'. Jos takes his 'punishment' and drops back to place 13, but he is still determined to move forward. In the last lap in the last corner Jos manages to overtake Team Australia for place 9 and when he tries to do the same to Mexico he damages his front wing and has to settle for 9th.

"Absolute madness that drive through penalty. I went in with the speedlimiter on and I was just a fast as Portugal. So Portugal should have had a penalty or mine was not justified. Our pitstop didn't go well either. I put the car in neutral and the rear wheels blocked which caused the engine to stall. If you then get served with a penalty and end up 13th, I had to do all or nothing to get some points. I had to finish in a point scoring position. I even tried to overtake Mexico in a last effort, but to no avail." Jos tells us via the telephone after the race. The scored points means that Team Netherlands is 8th in the championship.

Feature race result:

1  FRANCE             30 56:17.068 
2  GREAT BRITAIN      30 56:20.782 +3.714 
3  SOUTH AFRICA       30 56:23.758 +6.690 
4  PORTUGAL           30 56:25.067 +7.999 
5  CHINA              30 56:47.856 +30.788 
6  CANADA             30 56:48.411 +31.343 
7  AUSTRIA            30 56:51.510 +34.442 
8  MEXICO             30 56:52.570 +35.502 
9  NETHERLANDS        30 56:53.213 +36.145 
10 AUS AUSTRALIA      30 56:53.414 +36.346 
11 ITA ITALY          30 56:54.000 +36.932 
12 GER GERMANY        30 56:54.916 +37.848 
13 NZL NEW ZEALAND    30 57:06.192 +49.124 
14 IND INDIA          30 57:06.516 +49.448 
15 JPN JAPAN          29 56:31.602  1  lap  
16 LIB LEBANON        29 56:43.924  1  lap   
17 SUI SWITZERLAND    27 51:44.626  3 laps 
18 CZE CZECH REPUBLIC 27 56:55.997  3 laps  
19 PAK PAKISTAN       26 49:33.822  4 laps 
20 USA USA            26 49:34.130  4 laps  
21 IRL IRELAND         7 49:34.706 23 laps 
22 INA INDONESIA       5 9:16.302  25 laps 
23 BRA BRAZIL          4 8:27.787  26 laps 
24 MAL MALAYSIA        2 3:48.612  28 laps 

Thorsten Hendriks