IndyCar ace Robert Doornbos has taken his first victory in the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport after securing a comfortable win in the sprint race in the Algarve.

Doornbos had started the race from second on the grid but made light work of getting ahead of pole-sitter Vitantonio Liuzzi and was never headed from that point onwards – pit stops aside – as he carried the Netherlands to a victory which keeps their championship hopes alive.

Liuzzi proved unable to match his qualifying performance as he was shuffled back by Adam Carroll and Filipe Albuquerque during the pit-stops to put Ireland and Portugal onto the podium, with Liuzzi eventually taking the flag in fourth place on his first A1 appearance.

Clivio Piccione took fifth place, while the top six was completed by Indian racer Narain Karthikeyan.

The race itself was brought to a premature end after eleven laps following an accident involving Brazil's Felipe Guimaraes and South African's Adrian Zaugg. Zaugg was running two laps down after losing time at the start when he was involved in contact with Guimaraes, forcing officials to throw out the red flag.

Guimaraes was still classified in seventh place, but the race stoppage worked against Neel Jani, who had taken the flag in eighth place but had also been handed a stop/go penalty by race officials.

With no time to take the penalty, he was instead given 30 seconds added to his race time and dropped down to 15th place, moving Malaysia's Fairuz Fauzy into eighth place.