2012 Grand Prix of Ukraine postponed until Sunday

Strong winds and heavy rain forced race organisers to postpone the 2012 Grand Prix of Ukraine on the Kiev Sea at Vychgorod, near Kiev, on Saturday afternoon. The F1 race will now take place on Sunday afternoon at 15.00hrs, although the F-4S Eurofin Trophy race did go ahead on Saturday morning.

The Qatar Team’s Khalid Abdullah Al-Kuwari qualified in sixth position and finished in a similar position in the second of the weekend’s F-4S races for the Eurofin Trophy. England’s Matthew Palfreyman claimed pole position in his bid for a fifth win from six starts and he led from start-to-finish to extend his championship lead over Sweden’s Jesper Forss to 20 points.

F-4S Eurofin Trophy Qatar’s Khalid Abdullah Al-Kuwari set the fifth fastest time in Saturday morning’s second free practice session. Matthew Palfreyman won the stint with a quickest tour of 46.78s. The Qatari then headed straight into the time trials and ran for 17 laps, posting a quickest tour of 49.12s to confirm sixth position for the race. Palfreyman won the session with a lap of 46.65s to claim pole position.

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The Englishman moved into the lead shortly after the start of the race and had opened up a gap of six seconds over Forss by lap four, with Al-Kuwari down in sixth position. Palfreyman’s lead had grown to 7.91 seconds after 10 laps but it was pegged back to 4.55 seconds after 16 laps, as Al-Kuwari maintained sixth position. Forss was now on a charge and the lead wad whittled down to 3.85 seconds through lap 17 and to 2.5 seconds after the 18th lap.

Forss closed to within 0.91 seconds on the next lap and a gripping finale was in prospect with the pair pulling away from the rest of the field. Palfreyman pushed again on lap 20 to extend his advantage to 1.25 seconds, but the Sweden came back at him again to reduce the lead to 0.78 seconds.