South Africa, with Adrian Zaugg at the wheel of Vulindlela, bounced back from a disappointing qualifying on Saturday to finish a fighting fifth after starting Sunday's feature race in the third round of the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport in 16th place.

Ireland became the first two-time winner this season when Adam Carroll took a commanding victory in the 70-minute 34-lap race ahead of Portugal (Filipe Albuquerque), USA (Marco Andretti), Australia (John Martin) and South Africa.

Sprint race

Earlier on Sunday morning Switzerland (Neel Jani) became the fifth different winner in five races to win the sprint race. It was reigning champions Switzerland's third successive sprint race win in Malaysia. France (Loic Duval) was second ahead of New Zealand (Earl Bamber). South Africa finished ninth and one position out of the points after improving from 11th on the grid.

Adrian Zaugg survived an incident with Malaysia's Fairuz Fauzy on lap two, which saw the two cars make contact as Zaugg attempted to repass Fauzy following a successful overtaking manoeuvre by the Malaysian at the end of the pit straight on lap one. The South African made the move stick and Fauzy was forced into the pits with a flat tyre.

South Africa was up to eighth and in the points when the cars came in for the mandatory pit stop, but a quicker pit stop by Australia saw South Africa's traditional rugby and cricket rivals demote Zaugg to ninth.

Feature race

At the end of the first lap of the standing start feature race South Africa was up to 11th behind China and ahead of Australia. Zaugg was in determined mood and by lap five had made the biggest gains of any driver in the field, up to eighth and from his 16th place on the starting grid. South Africa was one of the last to pit for the first of the two mandatory tyre changes, a tactic that saw Zaugg move back ahead of Australia.

By lap 15 South Africa was up to fifth behind USA and ahead of Australia. When Malaysia dropped out of third place after a misunderstanding about a pit stop, Zaugg was moved up to fourth behind Ireland, Portugal and USA as the race approached the halfway point.

Australia had a better second pit stop than South Africa and relegated Zaugg to fifth. At this stage the three great southern hemisphere rugby playing nations of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand were running in a three-car train in fourth, fifth and sixth places.

They went on to finish in this order, with Zaugg making a last minute effort to overtake Australia and closing the gap to four tenths of a second at the chequered flag.

"Adrian had a great feature race and gained the most places of any of the drivers in the field," said Mike Carroll, general manager of A1 Team South Africa. "It was a good result for the team when it really counted. You could see Adrian was trying really hard by the clouds of dust from the carbon fibre disc brakes every time he braked."

Zaugg was please to have scored some points. "It was great to get a good result in the feature race after our problems in qualifying," said the South African. "I enjoyed the fight very much and making up so many places during the race. I was putting in a big effort and the front brakes were starting to fade towards the end. Fortunately I had enough PowerBoosts to protect my position from New Zealand, but I just couldn't manage to catch Australia at the finish."