driver representing the British Formula Three Championship was Nelson Piquet Jr. and he was joined by the series' scholarship champion E. J. Viso. Five drivers from outside of Formula Three received invitations from race organisers to enter the race. They were Lewis Hamilton, the Formula Renault 2.0 UK champion, who was entered as a result of his improved performances at the British series round at Brands Hatch, World Series by Nissan driver Narain Karthikeyan and Macau natives Lei Kit Meng, Michael Ho and Jo Merszei. Practice and qualifying There were two one-hour practice sessions preceding the race on Sunday: one on Thursday morning and one on Friday morning. Courtney, a pre-race favourite, lapped fastest early in the first practice session at 2 minutes, 14.724 seconds. He was 0.744 seconds quicker than Pierre Kaffer in second. Richard Antinucci, Tatsuya Kataoka, Karthikeyan, Fábio Carbone, Briscoe, Katsuyuki Hiranaka, Robert Kubica and Paolo Montin made up positions three through ten. Three incidents occurred during the session. Hamilton collided with Kataoka at Fisherman's Bend corner and spun into a barrier. Marco Bonanomi hit a wall at Dona Maria Bend corner and Fairuz Fauzy braked too late for Lisboa turn and struck the barrier. Qualifying was divided into two 45-minute sessions; the first was held on Thursday afternoon, and the second on Friday afternoon. The fastest time set by each driver from either session counted towards their final starting position for the race on Sunday. The start of the first qualifying session was delayed by 35 minutes due to an incident during practice for the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia race in which an unknown driver dented an Armco barrier at the exit of the pit lane and course officials had to repair it. When the session did start in overcast but warm weather, several drivers occupied provisional pole position, until Courtney avoided using new tyres to set a 2 minutes, 13.232 seconds lap and go quickest. Carbone was six-tenths of a second behind in second having held pole position for much of the session. Kaffer was consistently in the top four and was provisional third. Kataoka took fourth and Robert Doornbos fifth. Nicolas Lapierre corrected a ride height problem that slowed him in practice and was sixth after running strongly throughout. Lapierre was ahead of Montin and Piquet. Karthikeyan and César Campaniço were ninth and tenth. Antinucci was the fastest driver not to enter the top