Indeed it was and, moreover, a considerable improvement on Ireland's showings in A1GP's first two seasons, when the squad had wound up respectively eighth and 19th in the final standings. It could, though, have been even better still, had the 25-year-old from Portadown finished higher than 13th in the feature event at Brands, following a coming-together with Narain Karthikeyan in the Indian entry as the pair disputed second place early on that removed Carroll's front wing and sent him gravel-bound at the time looking like it was game over.
Though with supreme skill he was able to rejoin and charge back through the pack again to finish almost within touching distance of the final points-paying position at the chequered flag courtesy of a stunning sequence of fastest laps one after the other it was very much a case of what might have been, as arguably the form man of the weekend was left to walk away from the meeting with just a sole third place from the shorter sprint race for all his efforts.
Third place in the sprint was great starting from fourth, Carroll insisted, not too downcast. I got off the line into third and the pace was right there.
[What happened in the feature race] was very unfortunate. We had a little bit of a problem with the left rear, which stopped us getting out in front of India in the first round of pit-stops, and then he was just defending very, very aggressively.
Narain made a mistake, locked up and went wide, and I just was on the racing line on the inside. I think it was a bit unfair to turn in as hard as that. When I'm in that situation, the first thing I do is look to see where the other guy is. You have to give each other room, but there you go that's racing.
![Adam Carroll - A1 Team Ireland [pic credit: A1 GP Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/398622.jpg)
