[1] Friday practice for the second A1 Grand Prix race showed how close the competition in the new series is set to be.

Nelson Piquet Jr. continued his impressive form in the series to set the third fastest time, with the top 11 cars in the session covered by just one second.

Saturday's session saw the usual suspects move to the top of the leaderboard, with France (2nd), New Zealand (3rd), Brazil (4th), Switzerland (5th) and The Netherlands (6th) all setting quick times.

A1 Team USA surprised the paddock to take the other front row spot, driver Scott Speed managing to set the session's overall best time of 1'32.622 to end up only 0.056 seconds behind Lapierre.

Timo Scheider (Germany) continued his impressive form to take fifth, with Neel Jani (Switzerland) alongside him in sixth.

Before the start of the sprint race, all A1 Teams and drivers observed a minute's silence in respect to the victims of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

A first-corner incident between USA and Great Britain eliminated both teams on the spot, with Switzerland taking advantage of the chaos to slip into 2nd.

The collision also allowed Piquet to make up for starting the race in the wrong gear, the Brazilian able to retain his 3rd-place grid position by the end of the first lap.

This also meant that Jos Verstappen would start from 22nd place in the main race, hindering the Dutch team's chances of taking A1GP points despite their obvious pace.

A1 Team Italy also had a disappointing race, being handed a 25-second penalty for overtaking under a yellow caution flag, and falling out of the points from 8th to 17th.

Switzerland's troublesome long pitstop on lap 21 meant that Jani slipped down to 5th, allowing France to stretch its lead at the front.

Great Britain and Canada filled the remaining podium positions, followed home by the consistent New Zealand, who picked up 14 points.