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A1 Team Switzerland’s Neel Jani believes that it was just a matter of learning how best to use the clutch to avoid having one of the slow pit stops which were one of the main talking points of A1GP Taupo, New Zealand.

Several teams had slower-than-usual getaways following their pit stops, after the new A1GP car’s anti-stall mechanism kicked in, limiting speed to keep the engine running.

But rather than any technical glitch being present across the fleet of new cars, Feature race winner Jani insisted it was just a matter of drivers understanding the system and using it effectively to get away cleanly.

Jani himself suffered a slow getaway in one of his pit stops in, however it became key later on, with Ireland’s slow progress in the pits allowing Jani to move past and grab a lead he was never to lose.

“The pit lane here has an unusually grippy surface,” Jani told A1GP.com. “If you just dump the clutch the engine just dies, so you have to be smooth with its release.

“There is so much grip and not enough revs available with the pit lane speed limiter still on. The anti-stall only happened once to me but I figured it out why, so with the second pit stop and I tried it differently and I took off like a rocket.

“It is just there was more grip than usual, and usually pit lanes are very slippery so it’s not a problem. But here you just have to be more smooth with the clutch.

“It’s like a motorbike. If you let the clutch go suddenly then the bike just lifts you up, but if you are smooth with it, you go forward.

“You just need to think about the whole system works. The wheel of the engine is spinning, the clutch goes in and so if it just snaps in with not enough revs then it obviously dies and the anti-stall system kicks in. If you let it go smoothly then it will never die.”

However, an A1GP spokesperson confirmed that the series would look into the issue further to see if anything could be done to avoid a reoccurrence in future events

“We are looking into ways to make the system more user friendly and will test it here tomorrow,” the spokesperson said. “We have never seen it before in all our testing.

“Drivers who use a smooth action on the throttle and clutch never experienced this problem in what is a very compact pit lane with very rapid changes of direction.

“Erratic use of controls by drivers exaggerated the engine control causing anti-stall to be activated. Anti-stall has the function to stop the engine from switching off and that is what it did.”

source: www.a1gp.com