A1 Kamikaze Pilot Strikes Again
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Viewing TV3 Midnight 
>> Edited by Kiwi XTR2 on Monday 27th February 06:37
TVNZ said:
A bizarre crash has seen the New Zealand A1 Grand Prix team drop to sixth place on the championship table following the ninth round of the World Cup of Motorsport in Monterrey, Mexico.
Matt Halliday is still incredulous that Japan catapulted over the back of Black Beauty on the straight in the early stages of the opening sprint race when the entire field was cruising under a yellow flag.
The smash caused considerable damage and left the team battling to get the car on the grid for the feature race.
Under the circumstances, Halliday and the pit crew did extremely well to finish eighth in the feature race as the back end of the car became progressively more difficult to keep under control.
France won both races and recorded the quickest lap time to collect a perfect 21 points and extend their sizeable lead on the ladder. Switzerland with a second and third further cemented second place on the table.
The big movers of the day were Great Britain, who have pipped Brazil for third in the overall standings, and the Netherlands, who finished fourth and second to leap-frog over New Zealand into fifth place.
But the biggest leap-frog was Japan on Black Beauty.
"The talk in pit lane is that it was one of the most ridiculous things anyone's ever seen on a race track," Halliday said. "I'm struggling to put the words together to describe what happened and how bizarre it all was.
"It looks as if Hayanari (Shimoda, the Japanese driver) thought the race was being re-started and he simply put his foot down. The first thing I knew about it was an almighty shunt and bang and then he was barrel-rolling over me. It was surreal."
Halliday says he thought his day was all over at that stage.
"When I got the car back to the shed I thought there was no way we'd be getting back on the track, but the team did an incredible job to rebuild the back end and get us to the start line. We just didn't have time to do any set-up and that made it difficult to drive, particularly in the latter stages."
Black Beauty started from 18th on the grid, but was up to 13th by the end of the first lap. A superb pit stop and classy driving had Halliday in sixth place by lap 10, a position he held for almost 20 laps.
He dropped to seventh when Great Britain passed with six laps to go and couldn't hold out the Czech Republic with just three laps to go.
"The car was nervous under braking at the start of the feature race, but it got much worse as the race went on," Halliday said. "I just didn't have the pace to keep others at bay and while it was frustrating to drop a couple of places so close to the finish I had no other options. At that stage it was simply a case of nursing the car home."
The Sprint Race, the 17th race in this inaugural A1 Series, was the first race New Zealand had failed to finish.
A1GP now heads to California for the penultimate round in a fortnight and reaches its climax in Shanghai in the first weekend of April.
>> Edited by Kiwi XTR2 on Monday 27th February 06:37
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