Adrian Quaife-Hobbs got his GP2 season off to a solid start at the weekend with two top ten finishes in both races.
In the feature race he made his way through the field to finish in the last points paying position and in race two on Sunday he went four places better finishing in sixth place.
Quaife-Hobbs is racing in his second season in GP2 for Rapax and his weekend didn’t get off to the best of starts in qualifying, he could only put his number 14 car on the grid in 24th place for the first feature race of the season.
However following some hard work by the team on Friday evening the car was ready and raring to go on Saturday morning and that showed as Quaife-Hobbs released its potential.
Quaife-Hobbs started on soft tyres and after a flying start, within three laps had moved up to 16th place. The pit stop enabled the hard compound to be fitted at the end of lap nine and soon Adrian was making moves through the field and thanks to his solid pace he recovered up to the 10th position by the end of the feature race.
Speaking after the feature race, a pleased Quaife-Hobbs said: “I believe that today’s race was compromised by the Safety-Car that froze the race from lap 3 to 6. I had opted for a less aggressive approach, starting with the soft tyres before going for the hard ones after a few laps.
“The Safety-Car then allowed everybody else to manage their tyre wear in a better fashion. On the other hand, I am happy to have started the season with my first points in the drivers’ standings. It was a nice reward for a demanding race.”
Quaife-Hobbs started in tenth place on the grid and again made a lightening start, promoting him to fourth after turn one. The race settled down and Adrian remained in fourth place for most of the race, until the closing laps saw his tyres degrading badly.
Adrian continued to drive a controlled race to keep Felipe Nasr (Carlin) behind him, with tyres wearing even faster this allowed Nasr and Stephane Richelmi (Dams) to make the most of this, leaving Adrian to cross the line 6th place.
Giving his thoughts after the sprint race, Adrian added: “Today my start has been really good and I managed to breeze by six cars. The good getaway gave me the chance to aim for points but I suffered from a slight understeer condition, which wasn’t particularly tricky in terms of the driving as it was for the tyre wear.
In the second part of the race I tried not to go too hard on the tyres, but in the last few laps there was a pack of cars fighting for positions. Considering the outcome of qualifying, ending up twice into the points zone makes our balance quite positive, and rewards us for the hard work the team did over the weekend”.
The series continues at Barcelona over the weekend on May 10/11th where BRDC Superstar Adrian Quaife-Hobbs, looks to improve his performance to elevate himself in the championship standings