O'Young grabs pole despite crash

On the second lap of qualifying, Hong Kong's Darryl O'Young won pole position for tomorrow's final Porsche Carrera Cup Asia race. Minutes later, he rammed into a barrier.

O'Young, who was quickest in Thursday's practice, clocked two minutes and 29.171 seconds to grab pole position, just 0.007 seconds ahead of British driver Danny Watts. However, on the ensuing lap, O'Young went into one of the hill bends a little too quickly, locking up his tyres in the process. The error ended his session.

'I was really pushing hard, and when you're driving to the limit, sometimes you make a mistake,' O'Young said.

He spent the rest of the session off to the side without any knowledge of the other drivers' times. He was relieved to discover he still had pole.

Neither O'Young nor Hong Kong's Marchy Lee Ying-kin is in a position to win the Carrera Cup, with Christian Jones and Tim Sugden, the two drivers who can win the series, qualifying fourth and sixth respectively.

Jones felt the session should have been halted after O'Young's accident. 'To allow cars to go along is dangerous. I think it's ridiculous that cars were allowed to keep going,' he said.

At the time of the accident, Jones was running third, but lost one position as Lee came within 0.188 of O'Young's time. Lee was annoyed by his qualifying session, not because of his time, but because he felt he could have gotten hold of pole position.

'I was fastest on the last lap and I still had to pass Nigel Albon, I don't know why he hung around [and blocked me],' Lee said.