Neel Jani made Switzerland the sixth different winner in seven races when he romped to a comfortable lights-to-flag victory in the Sprint race for the fourth round of the A1 Grand Prix at Sepang, avenging his final lap defeat in last year's race.
Making the most of his pole position and the short Sprint race distance, Jani swept into the lead from the start and did not look back, laying to rest the agony of being beaten on the final lap by Alex Premat in the French entry last season.
Joining Jani on the podium were Niko Hulkenberg in second for Germany an New Zealand's Jonny Reid, but just as there was when they crashed at Brno, there was controversy between the pair after a collision at the start.
Getting away cleanly, Reid stayed close to Jani on the run up to the first corner and tried his luck at trying to get past the Swiss car. The move did not work though and instead allowed Hulkenberg to dive down the outside of Reid, making slight contact with his Super Nova counterpart and losing him momentum.
With Hulkenberg up to second, Reid had to make do with damaged suspension for the remainder of the race, but still managed to hold onto New Zealand's first podium of the season and indeed their first since the inaugural A1 event at
Brands Hatch 14 months ago.
Still, while Reid was content with his best result of the series so far, he was nonetheless far from happy with his team-mate', claiming Hulkenberg merely ran into him.
I am not smiling as I was run into in the first corner by my team-mate, said Reid, I am not happy about that. We will have to sit down and talk about it again as it is the second time it has happened. We are lucky that we both didn't go off.
He was right onto my rear tyre and I think for the remainder of the race the rear suspension was a bit damaged. I am a bit annoyed about it but third place is still third place and it is still good points and we have just got to get down and fine tune the car a bit more and get it right for the main race.
Hulkenberg was being rather more diplomatic, insisting he was not going to comment on the incident before seeing a replay.
My start was pretty good and then into the first corner. I just know what happened in the first corner from my view, so I want to watch the TV footage to see what happened. I can't really tell you about this. I am confident but as we saw Neel is really quick on a long distance too, but I think it is a long race and everything can happen.
