02/05/2009
NEWS STORY
A1 Team Netherlands continued to set the pace in free practice at Brands Hatch, despite managing just five complete laps in Saturday morning practice. Jeroen Bleekemolen set a superb lap of 1m 12.804 seconds, before spinning the Dutch car out at Druids hairpin.
"I was just pushing a little bit too hard," Bleekemolen admitted. "I had some oversteer and I made a mistake. I was trying to find limits and the tyres are getting older but I made a mistake. But I won't get distracted by this. We should be strong for this afternoon."
His lap was just 0.091 seconds quicker than a surprise second place holder – Satrio Hermanto of Indonesia.
Hermanto used his one practice PowerBoost lap to set the time, testing it ahead of this afternoon's qualifying, where teams get to use one such lap in any of the four qualifying sessions.
USA's good weekend continued with John Hildebrand setting the third fastest time, ahead of India's Narain Karthikeyan and Monaco's Clivio Piccione. Switzerland's Neel Jani was the quickest of the championship challengers, right ahead of Portugal's Filipe Albuquerque and Ireland's Adam Carroll.
The session was curtailed by two big accidents - the first to Karthikeyan, and the second to Germany's Michael Ammermuller, who crashed heavily on the exit of Stirlings.