Round three of A1GP World Cup of Motorsport got underway at the Sepang International Circuit this morning with France's Nicolas Prost starting the day as the quickest rookie and Great Britain's Danny Watts (right) ending the day quickest overall in Malaysia.

A1 Team France got off to a flying start in the rookie session with Nicolas Prost topping the timesheets right at the end of the session. His time of 1-minute 50.679s was nearly half a second quicker than anyone else.

Great Britain's Danny Watts was second quickest, ahead of Earl Bamber on his return for New Zealand. India's Armaan Ebrahim was fourth, just beating home nation Malaysia, who had Aaron Lim behind the wheel to start the day.

"Chengdu was mostly about bumps rather than turns but this track is really amazing," said Prost. "I was really looking forward to coming here because it's one of the nicest tracks in the world, and I think it was the first time we could get the real potential out the car, especially in the quick corners. Turns 5 and 6, the quick left and right, in particular were pretty good."

In hot and humid conditions, Great Britain topped the timesheets in the afternoon's official practice session. Watts' time of 1m 50.038s set on his second flying lap couldn't be bettered during the hour practice.

Due to a gearbox problem, A1 Team Switzerland didn't make it out on track during this morning's session, but the lack of track time didn't hinder Neel Jani. Last season, Jani had the perfect weekend claiming both pole positions and converting them into wins, so it was no surprise that after doing only nine laps today, he clocked a time of 1m 50.110s, just 0.072 adrift of Watts.

A1 Team India's Narain Karthikeyan's time of 1m 50.187s in the final minutes of the session was, just 0.149s from pole while Loïc Duval took over the wheel of the French car to finish the day fourth-quickest.

"With the extra running I got this morning I was always going to be there or there abouts," said Watts. "I think looking at the times, the top ten are very close and there's hardly anything in it. It will be the same story tomorrow so it will be very tight at the top."

Home nation Malaysia ended the day tenth. Fairuz Fauzy said: "There is a bit of pressure, but it's good pressure. The last lap was a good run. We managed to do a bit of work on the car, as at the beginning of the session I was struggling with grip, especially on low speed corners. I was struggling to get the front to turn in and I got massive under steer. I was a second off the pace to begin with but during the session we did change the car and the last lap was a good one – only six tenths off the fastest.