Yifei Ye secured his first two Formula Renault 2.0 victories last weekend at the Hockenheimring, winning both races of the Northern European Cup finale.
The Josef Kaufmann Racing driver had secured two pole positions in tricky qualifying conditions on Friday, and then dominated both Saturday races, beating team-mate Sacha Fenestraz into second place twice.
The seventeen-year-old Chinese racer, the 2016 French F4 Champion, has often played second fiddle to Fenestraz in 2017, so it was a great way to end the NEC season with the two wins, and he praised his team for giving him and his team-mate the car to fight at the front all weekend long.
“I have to give a lot of credit to the team who gave us such fantastic cars to race, it was a very positive weekend – a double pole and double victory – so I’m very happy about that,” said Ye.
“After two brilliant qualifying sessions yesterday, our mindset was to bring the cars home first and second for the team.”
Fenestraz was left with too much work to do to take the win after dropping from second on the grid to third at the start of race one, and by the time he had found his way passed Richard Verschoor, Ye was out of reach.
In race two, he attempted to attack Ye from the start, but found the Chinese racer a tough nut to crack, and he was again forced to settle for second.
“The start was a little bit hard, I think the right side was a bit dirty,” said Fenestraz. “And then with Richard, it was a little bit hard to overtake him, since he was quite fast at the beginning.
“Once I’d gotten past I just had to try to do my best, go as fast as possible and then try to catch up Yifei, but like yesterday he did an amazing job and was really fast.
“I preferred to just take some more experience in a race situation and keep that second place until the end.”
