Toyota Racing made a solid start to the Six Hours of Bahrain weekend, by setting the second fastest time of the day at the Bahrain International Circuit. Following their race-winning performance two weeks ago in Brazil, Alex Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre again share the #7 TS030 HYBRID this weekend for the sixth round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

Their best lap from first practice ended up as the second fastest of the day's running after the team concentrated on longer stints in the evening.

The A1 Grand Prix series seems to be out of the 2010 sporting calendar with high profile cancellation of races in Australia, Malaysia, China, South Africa and Holland. TheSportsCampus.com explores the dogged past of this "World Cup of Motorsports" series and the events leading upto this debacle.

The troubles for the nation-versus-nation A1 GP series began in June 2009 when A1 Grand Prix Operations Ltd., the A1 Holdings subsidiary that manages its day-to-day operations, went into liquidation after cash-flow problems and reported accumulated debts of nearly $162 million.

This was followed by doubts on the commencement of the 2009 season after rumours surfaced that engine suppliers Ferrari would pull out over non-payments of dues. Current chairman Tony Teixeira's restructuring announcements didn't help either as A1GP failed to show up to their events, notably dishonoring bookings at Australia, China and Malaysia - severely denting all confidence in the franchise.

Round Six of the 2008/09 A1GP World Cup of Motorsport continued this afternoon with Vitantonio Liuzzi claiming Italy's first ever A1GP pole position for tomorrow's Vodafone A1GP Algarve, Portugal Sprint race. Robert Doornbos took his first pole position for A1 Team Netherlands in Feature race qualifying.

With the title battle heating up the pressure is mounting on the top title contenders, but only a few minutes into the first qualifying segment the red flag was out as China's Ho-Pin Tung spun and got stuck out on track. As the clock continu

A1 Team Ireland's Adam Carroll dominated qualifying to put the Celtic Tiger on pole position for both of tomorrow's races in Taupo, New Zealand. Carroll initially took control of Sprint race qualifying, posting a time of 1 minute 15.197 seconds round the 2.06-mile circuit.

With so many incidents interrupting every session so far this weekend and no PowerBoost being available in qualifying for this event, the pressure was on for the drivers not to make any mistakes in each of their four flying laps this afternoon. In the blistering heat, China and Australia were first to emerge on track but it wasn't until the final moments of the first qualifying segment that the real action began with Switzerland's Neel J

A1 Team Germany will have to postpone its A1GP World Cup of Motorsport Season Four debut, and this means the team will now plan for being on track for the first time in A1GP Gauteng, South Africa on 20-22 February.

"A1 Team Germany has been affected by delays. All the necessary ingredients to get the team on track in Taupo did not come together, so there was no other option but to delay the team's Season Four debut. On the positive side, we hope the car can cover some test miles so when the team arrives in South Africa it will be able to catch up rapidly," said A1GP CEO, Pete da Silva. With A1 Team Germany being totally new - a new Team Principal, a new service provider and a new driver in Andre Lotterer - there wa