Qualifying: Mexico fastest, Jos 12th

Published on 13 March 2006 by Thorsten Hendriks

The qualification result was not known until the very last second. Salvador Duran took a last attempt to beat France and he did. France was relegated to second, but with Switzerland on 16th, it shouldn't be too difficult to win the championship. Jos only managed to take 12th.

In the first run Jos was very fast, until he was held up by Brasil in the last few corners. At the end of the first session he was 8th. No improvement during 2nd session, but others did meant he dropped to 11th. Third session is a lot better and Jos gains a whole second off his fastst time. In the fourth session he gains another 0.6 of a second and place 12 is his.

Remarkable positions for Lebanon (Graham Rahal manaded to put his team on place 11), Malaysia's Alex Yoong on 4th and Australia's Ryan Briscoe on fifth. Not so good are the positions of Czechia (14th), USA (17th) and Canada (18th). These two announced before the race that this would be their weekend. They will have to make up a lot of places to get a good result. Team Brasil got stuck on 19th place, which is quite unusual.

The results:

   Team             Fastest     2nd fastest  Total       Difference
1  MEXICO           1'15.189    1'15.555     2'30.744
2  FRANCE           1'15.384    1'15.511     2'30.895    +0.151
3  NEW ZEALAND      1'15.773    1'15.823     2'31.596    +0.852
4  MALAYSIA         1'15.529    1'16.281     2'31.810    +1.066
5  AUSTRALIA        1'15.748    1'16.216     2'31.964    +1.220
6  GREAT BRITAIN    1'15.762    1'16.208     2'31.970    +1.226
7  PORTUGAL         1'15.982    1'16.060     2'32.042    +1.298
8  IRELAND          1'15.873    1'16.225     2'32.098    +1.354
9  GERMANY          1'16.000    1'16.307     2'32.307    +1.563
10 SOUTH AFRICA     1'16.097    1'16.438     2'32.535    +1.791
11 LEBANON          1'16.244    1'16.316     2'32.560    +1.816
12 NETHERLANDS      1'15.939    1'16.632     2'32.571    +1.827
13 ITALY            1'16.116    1'16.629     2'32.745    +2.001
14 CZECH REPUBLIC   1'16.210    1'16.628     2'32.838    +2.094
15 INDONESIA        1'16.499    1'16.750     2'33.249    +2.505
16 SWITZERLAND      1'16.479    1'16.820     2'33.299    +2.555
17 USA              1'16.648    1'16.954     2'33.602    +2.858
18 CANADA           1'16.440    1'17.201     2'33.641    +2.897
19 BRAZIL           1'16.491    1'17.195     2'33.686    +2.942
20 AUSTRIA          1'17.065    1'17.273     2'34.338    +3.594
21 PAKISTAN         1'17.727    1'18.598     2'36.325    +5.581
22 CHINA            1'18.226    1'19.489     2'37.715    +6.971

Thorsten Hendriks