Team effort rewarded Adrian Quaife-Hobbs with a sensational second place finish in Race 1 of the GP2 Series this weekend at Budapest.

Quaife-Hobbs took-off with "soft" compound tyres, The episode that decided the race came on lap 6, when a safety-car neutralization was thrown due to a contact between Richelmi and Sato. Team Rapax called from the pits to Quaife-Hobbs immediately to serve the mandatory tyre change by switching from soft to mediums. Once back on-track, the British BRDC Superstar driver a very good pace and when all the rivals completed their pit-stops, he recovered a massive amount of positions cruising to third place when the checkered flag fell, that later became second after a penalty imposed to Coletti. 

Race 1 comments from Adrian Quaife-Hobbs: Strategy played a huge role today, at the start of the race we always try to gain positions at the start because obviously qualifying has not been great for us this year. That was our goal today, but with so many people starting on the primes today, my engineer told me on the radio with four laps in to try and slow down to save the options and try to extend them. Then on lap 6, I was coming around the second to last corner and my engineer said there might be a safety car. So I decided to go straight into the pitlane. as soon as I came out of the pits, the safety car came out. We knew then that it was a good strategy. Obviously, it also meant that I had to try and make the tyres last. I was trying to push Stefano hard. We had a good fair fight. I think we probably fought a bit too long. After that we sort of settled down and I was going to try to attack at the end, but we did not have too much tyres left. So we both were happy to see the safety car to the end of the race.

When I saw the safety I asked my engineer who was letting me know we were trying to go for P8 at that point. Every lap, I was moving up. I don’t think anyone really knew what was happening! Then, I came out behind the safety car and I said there were three cars ahead of me and he said “ah yes, don’t worry we’re in fourth now, keep pushing!” I thought that was a mistake with the safety car… 

The problem we have been experiencing so far this season, is we keep starting around the 20th place. For some reasons, we don’t get qualifying right at the moment. It’s not from lack of trying. We’re trying very hard. This weekend we were 8th in practice and then it fell apart in qualifying. But in the race, the pace has always been good. We start always around 20th and we fight in the end for the top ten. This was the first time we got a bit of luck on our side. We showed our pace is good even when we’re at the front. We just need to sort out qualifying. That’s our issue. Normally, the race pace is the hardest part to find with the Pirelli tyre. I think we just need to try to look back at practice and try to work out what we did to get 8th and try to build on that.

Race two began with the usual train of positions, as overtaking is always difficult, starting from 7th position, Adrian lost places in turn one after taking avoiding action, he took up 9th position to soon overtake Sorensen for 8th place and stayed there for the entire race. Although Adrian crossed the line in 8th, he was demoted due to the officials deeming he was at fault when Dillman made an over optimistic move for a corner that he was never going to make, as he had nothing to loose from 9th place.

Adrian next takes to the track at Spa over the weekend of 23/24 August. For more updates please see wwww.quaifehobbs.com