Carroll celebrates Ireland maiden A1 win

Adam Carroll claimed Ireland’s first A1GP victory in sensational style in Mexico City on Sunday ahead of Great Britain’s Oliver Jarvis as title contenders Switzerland, New Zealand and France endured a tough afternoon and failed to score points.

Ireland became the 15th nation to win an A1GP race as Portadown’s Carroll, in his debut A1GP season, won by 3.355 seconds ahead of Jarvis.

A day before St Patrick’s day, Carroll started the 47-lap race from fifth on the grid.

The race started under a green flag after the first start was aborted due to technical problems with the starting lights, and the 25-year-old leapt up the order into second behind Switzerland’s Neel Jani following excellent work from the Irish team during the first compulsory pit stop on lap nine.

Ireland stayed behind Switzerland until lap 34 when both drivers pitted for the second compulsory stop, but Carroll emerged ahead of Jani.

Jani was later hit with a drive-through penalty for ’unsafe release’ from his second stop after running alongside Carroll as the pair exited the pit lane and eventually finished 19th following a late collision with Pakistan’s Adam Khan.

“It’s been three long years for the team,” said Carroll. “We knew they were capable of doing those times and today they pulled it off and it won us the race. We’ve put in so much effort and this is for everybody who has believed in A1 Team Ireland.

“Hopefully this is the first of many – it’s just fantastic. I had champagne in my trophy and I don’t think the celebrating will stop tonight – it will probably finish sometime tomorrow afternoon, I just hope everybody makes the flight home!”

Jarvis claimed second from fourth on the grid to notch up a second podium finish of the weekend after earlier finishing second behind New Zealand in the sprint race.

He also scored a bonus point for setting the fastest lap of the race to move Great Britain up to fourth in the overall table.

“Mexico has been a fantastic place for me,” said Jarvis. “I’ve had four great results here and we really wanted the win today but unfortunately Ireland just did a fantastic job. We got some strong points and we will look forward to going into the last two races and especially Brands Hatch on 4 May.”

USA’s Jonathan Summerton charged through the field from seventh on the grid to finish third ahead of Netherlands’ Jeroen Bleekemolen.

Pole-sitters Canada finished fifth, while Portugal, Brazil, India, China, Indonesia rounded out the top-10, with New Zealand finishing 12th, a place ahead of France.

New Zealand’s Jonny Reid was running in seventh for the first half of the race, but ran wide at the chicane on lap 25.