Dramatic morning for Dutch

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 tires 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.

Results

Pos	A1 Team	Driver	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Netherlands	Jeroen Bleekemolen	1'12.804		5
2	Indonesia	Satrio Hermanto	1'12.895	0.091	20
3	USA	J.R. Hildebrand	1'12.915	0.111	21
4	India	Narain Karthikeyan	1'12.996	0.192	8
5	Monaco	Clivio Piccione	1'13.039	0.235	13
6	Switzerland	Neel Jani	1'13.191	0.387	21
7	Portugal	Filipe Albuquerque	1'13.434	0.630	16
8	Ireland	Adam Carroll	1'13.435	0.631	10
9	France	Nicolas Prost	1'13.480	0.676	19
10	Lebanon	Daniel Morad	1'13.579	0.775	17
11	Australia	John Martin	1'13.683	0.879	21
12	New Zealand	Earl Bamber	1'13.739	0.935	17
13	Mexico	Salvador DurÃ¡n	1'13.979	1.175	20
14	Brazil	Felipe GuimarÃ£es	1'14.044	1.240	23
15	Italy	Vitantonio Liuzzi	1'14.052	1.248	18
16	Germany	Michael AmmermÃ¼ller	1'14.109	1.305	15
17	Great Britain	Dan Clarke	1'14.227	1.423	18
18	China	Cheng Cong Fu	1'14.449	1.645	18
19	South Africa	Alan van der Merwe	1'14.524	1.720	22
20	Malaysia	Aaron Lim	1'14.745	1.941	21