© 2017, Mathematical Sciences Publishers. All rights reserved. We study a version of the James model for the loop space of a suspension in unstable A1-homotopy theory. We use this model to establish an analog of G W Whitehead’s classical refinement of the Freudenthal suspension theorem in A1-homotopy theory: our result refines F Morel’s A1-simplicial suspension theorem. We then describe some E1-differentials in the EHP sequence in A1-homotopy theory. These results are analogous to classical results of G W Whitehead. Using these tools, we deduce some new results about unstable A1-homotopy sheaves of motivic spheres, including the counterpart of a classical rational nonvanishing result.