KEY POINTS:
With Earl Bamber back behind the wheel, New Zealand banked a solid 11 points from the third round of the A1 grand prix at Malaysia's Sepang circuit yesterday.
Bamber, 18, avoided some early spectacular crashes in the opening laps of both the sprint and feature race to finish
third and sixth respectively.
USA, Brazil and India collided on the run-up to the rolling start in the sprint race and when the race resumed, it was led by eventual winner Team Switzerland.
Starting third, Bamber maintained his position early in the race and a super fast pit stop by the New Zealand crew saw him rejoin the track in second place.
However it was a tight call for the team when they released Bamber from the pitstop, as he emerged from his pit box alongside the French car. To avoid the risk for further penalty, the decision was made to relinquish second back to Team France.
Bamber held third to the finish, 11 seconds down on race winner Switzerland, and hot on the heels of Team France.
In the feature race, an early spin by Swiss driver Neel Jani put the sprint race winner out, bringing out the safety car.
Great Britain got caught up at the re-start with France, and was forced to take a long pit stop to replace the nose of their car, while the French car needed a new rear tyre from the same incident.
With 19 laps to run, Bamber had worked his way into the top 10, and continued the charge forward while at the same time staying out of trouble.
At the chequered flag, New Zealand had gained nine places in all, finishing without damage in sixth place. This gave the Kiwi team a solid points haul as the championship takes a break over Christmas, before heading to the team's home race in Taupo early next year.
Bamber said it was a sound overall team effort which made the difference.
"We had really good pace today, especially in clean air with no traffic in front of us. The team did some fantastic pit-stops today, which really helped us work our way forward in the feature race," he said.
Team Ireland won the feature race, after a dominant performance with driver Adam Carroll finishing almost 16 seconds ahead of second placed Team Portugal, the feature race winner at the previous round at Chengdu, China.
In the championship standings, New Zealand moved back up the ladder and now hold joint third place with France. Ireland move from second place in the points to the lead, with an eight point margin over Portugal.
- NZPA
