Zoom Pole position at home for the Team Netherlands

Local hero Jeroen Bleekemolen will start on pole position in the A1 Team Netherlands car for his home race tomorrow, A1GP Zandvoort, after posting a superb lap of 1m 24.213 seconds in qualifying at Circuit Park Zandvoort.

Bleekemolen set the stunning lap with approximately 15 minutes to go in the session, and chose to sit out the final minutes while the rest of the field tried to beat his time. However, he ended up more than three tenths of a second quicker than A1 Team New Zealand's Earl Bamber.

Ireland and Malaysia will start on the second row, with strong laps from Adam Carroll and Fairuz Fauzy respectively.

In a change from the usual format, the A1 Teams had a full hour of qualifying with their best time counting towards the grid position for tomorrow's race.

Ireland was fastest straight out of the box, going to the top of the time sheets by posting a 1m 28.012s time on its first flying lap, which was already faster than last year's A1GP lap record.

Loic Duval then took to the track for the first time this weekend for A1 Team France. 18-year-old Daniel Morad ran off briefly while pushing hard but rejoined without any damage. John Martin was also back on track after the A1 Team Australia squad worked hard to get him out for qualifying after the car was damaged in practice earlier today.

25 minutes into the session the order stood as Ireland, Malaysia, Italy, Monaco, USA and then New Zealand. However, A1 Team Netherlands took provisional pole position as Jeroen Bleekemolen smashed Ireland's time, recording a lap of 1m 25.422 seconds. Almost immediately, the red flags were out as A1 Team Korea's Jin Woo Hwang hit the barrier at turn seven.

With the clock still ticking down, there was just under 39 minutes left when the session restarted. Several cars came straight out on track, including Ireland who re-took pole position from Netherlands with a 1m 24.760s.

Charlie Kimball moved up to fourth with an impressive lap, despite the Californian having done very little running in the US car. The Californian is in the cockpit for the USA this weekend after it was announced earlier this week that American team Andretti Green Racing would run the US entry in A1GP this season.

Team co-owner Michael Andretti flew into Zandvoort this morning to announce to the world's media his plans for the squad's driver line-up, confirming that both his son, Marco, and renowned female racer Danica Patrick are in the team's plan to race this season.