Ezra Idafar, the youngest driver in this seasons Championship, returned to the Chevrolet Superstars ME Championship and recorded a brace of class podiums at the wheel of his Chevrolet Lumina 6.0l Racer during the GP2 Asia race weekend at Yas Marina, in Abu Dhabi. These results have lifted the youngster to 4th in the SC06 Development Class standings.
Idafar, who took a brace of podiums in the season opening races at the track in the U.A.E during the 2009 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix back in October, missed the following 2 rounds of the Championship which here held in Saudi Arabia.
Idafar showed no signs of race rustiness when he took to the track for the free practise session on the Friday; the amount of track time that Ezra was able to get was limited due to car problems.
A transmission failure meant that the team needed to fix the car before qualifying, but with only one hour between the end of free practice and the start of qualifying, this meant that Ezra could only get out for the final few minutes of the session, and with one timed lap, Ezra was still able to qualify fifth in class for the first race, held Friday afternoon.
The race saw Ezra climb up the order impressively and finished second in class, and finished 2 seconds behind point's leader Faisal Raffai, and set a personal best lap of 2m39.300, a very good effort by the youngster.
The second race of the weekend, which occurred on the Saturday, saw Idafar record his forth podium of the season, as he finished 8th overall and third in class, and in the process, set the best lap for the SC06 Class with a time of 2:39.288. Combining the points, Ezra is now only 7 points off the top 3 in the development class standings, with 20 points so far this season.
Ezra said about the races: “It's great to be back on the podium again, the weekend was difficult with the problems in practice and qualifying but both races went well for me. Even though I missed the previous event in Saudi Arabia and had two non-finishes in Bahrain in December, we're still in quite a good position in the SC06 Class championship.”
The next rounds of the Championship are in support of the opening Australian V8 Supercars Championship, again at the Yas Marina facility at Abu Dhabi, on the 19th and 20th February.
