The front of row for Sunday's A1GP Dubai grid will mirror that of round 5 in Malaysia with Team Switzerland's Neel Jani capturing his second pole of the year trailed by Team France and Team Ireland. Jani will be looking to reverse his Sepang fortunes when he lost the lead to "all conquering" Team France on the penultimate lap of that Feature event. He will also be looking to break France's string of eight consecutive wins.

Jani, who'll be Scuderia Toro Rosso's third driver in Formula 1 in 2006, held off France's Nicolas Lapierre by over a half second but the Frenchman may have been hampered by the first qual session being red flagged and a brake problem in the second.

Team Mexico's Salvador Duran took to the gravel early into the 15 minute first session. The resulting red flag only permitted Teams USA, India, Australia and Lebanon to register times. Duran's ride couldn't be repaired in time and he will start shotgun on the field Sunday.

New A1 Team USA driver Phil Giebler qualified in 15th out of 24 national teams. After being only 9 tenths off the top time in the final qual session Saturday morning the "We The People" car seemed to lose ground during the four qual sessions as Giebler's aggregate time is over 2.5 seconds behind Neel Jani's best.

The Sprint race will be contested over 50 miles lasting up to 30 minutes in duration. With a rolling start Sunday's race will be run over 15 laps of the 5.39km Dubai Autodrome. The outcome of the race determines the grid position for the Feature race which will commence from a standing start. The Feature race will be run over 100 miles (30 laps) lasting up to 60 minutes in duration.

On another note, A1 Grand Prix reached another milestone Saturday when its 3.4 litre V8 power unit notched 100,000km (62137 miles) without a single engine failure. It was A1 Team South Africa's Stephen Simpson who broke through the 100,000 barrier in this morning's third official practice session.

A1GP - Dubai sprint race starting lineup:

1. Switzerland Neel Jani 3m 31.918s
2. France Nicolas Lapierre 3m 32.551s
3. Ireland Ralph Firman 3m 32.626s
4. Brazil Nelson Piquet Jr 3m 32.627s
5. Great Britain Robbie Kerr 3m 32.634s
6. Germany Adrian Sutil 3m 33.105s
7. Czech Republic Tomas Enge 3m 33.307s
8. Malaysia Alex Yoong 3m 33.320s
9. Canada Sean McIntosh 3m 33.841s
10. Portugal Alvaro Parente 3m 34.118s
11. Italy Enrico Toccacelo 3m 34.141s
12. Indonesia Ananda Mikola 3m 34.233s
13. South Africa Stephen Simpson 3m 34.252s
14. Japan Hayanari Shimoda 3m 34.502s
15. USA Philip Giebler 3m 34.692s
16. China Tengyi Jiang 3m 34.925s
17. New Zealand Matt Halliday 3m 34.976s
18. India Armaan Ebrahim 3m 35.007s
19. Netherlands Jos Verstappen 3m 35.074s
20. Pakistan Adam Khan 3m 35.183s
21. Austria Mathias Lauda 3m 35.981s
22. Australia Christian Jones 3m 36.276s
23. Lebanon Basil Shaaban 3m 38.069s
24. Mexico Salvador Duran No time

Cross Posted @ Fast Machines, Full Throttle and Asian MotorSports Blog