Quaife-Hobbs celebrates his pole position in the Monza pitlane - Photo Credit: Auto GP
GP3 Series race winner Adrian Quaife-Hobbs has taken pole position for the first race of the Auto GP season at Monza.
In doing so, the British driver repeated his achievement from the last qualifying session he contested, which was also at Monza last September at the GP3 season finale.
The Super Nova driver moved ahead with six minutes remaining in the session. Teen sensation Sergey Sirotkin came close to pole with his final attempt, falling just four hundredths of a second short.
“Getting pole-position is always a great feeling, especially when you work so hard with the team in order to get what you're aiming for,” said Quaife-Hobbs.
“Since the morning we really worked on the tiniest details to make the car as performing as possible, and looking at how much we improved from the first practice, I'd say that it worked quite well. I still had a little gearbox glitch that wasn't helping me at all with the upshifts, but we have the time to fix it and get a perfect car for tomorrow's race.”
In a grid dominated by series debutants, Italian F3 champion Sergio Campana could only manage third having set the pace in free practice. He will be joined on the second row of the grid by GP2 convert Pal Varhaug.
Chris van der Drift will start sixth for Manor MP Motorsport, just ahead of the second Super Nova car of Victor Guerin. Antonio Spavone and Facundo Regalia will share the fourth row, with Giacomo Ricci and Daniel De Jong completing the top ten.
1. Adrian Quaife-Hobbs (Super Nova International) 1:36.603
2. Sergey Sirotkin (Euronova Racing) 1:36.644
3. S.ergio Campana (MLR 71) 1:36.748
4. Pal Varhaug (Virtuosi UK) 1:36.941
5. Chris Van Der Drift (Manor MP Motorsport) 1:37.286
6. Victor Guerin (Super Nova International) 1:37.349
7. Antonio Spavone (Euronova Racing) 1:37.553
8. Facundo Regalia (Campos Racing) 1:37.581
9. Giacomo Ricci (Zele Racing) 1:37.766
10. Daniel De Jong (Manor MP Motorsport) 1:37.862
11. Adderly Fong (Ombra Racing) 1:38.076
12. Giuseppe Cipriani (Campos Racing) 1:38.132
13. Max Snegirev (Campos Racing) 1:38.699
14. Matteo Beretta (Virtuosi UK) 1:39.271
15. Michele La Rosa (MLR 71) 1:39.721
16. Giancarlo Serenelli (Ombra Racing) 1:39.805
