Phil Quaife enjoyed a strong debut for CRS Racing at the opening round of the FIA GT3 European Championship at Silverstone, finishing 17th in race 1 and 12th in race 2 and as best-placed Ferrari, in both races, in the packed 37-car field.
The solid results were helped by two charging drives from Quaife and testament to the hard work by the CRS Racing team who only received the new Ferrari 430 Scuderia cars on Wednesday afternoon and worked around-the-clock to prepare them for the race weekend.
With both Quaife and team-mate Robert Hissom new to the car, they used Friday’s practice session as a shake down/test and began to move closer to the overall pace by qualifying on Saturday.
Hissom started race 1 from the midfield and drove a solid first stint to climb a couple of places at the time of the mandatory driver change. Phil took over and stormed through the field from 23rd, breaking into the top eight.
Unfortunately, a misfire with few minutes remaining in the race caused by a fuel pick-up issue saw him start to plummet in the closing laps. Despite his attempts to drive around the problem, the car died with two laps to go, leaving Quaife to coast around to the finish, dropping him from eight to 17th at the chequered flag.
Quaife started the second race from 13th on the grid and immediately made places on a tightly packed opening lap. Another strong stint saw him in eighth place at the driver change, with Hissom doing another fine job to secure 12th at the finish.
Phil admitted he was generally satisfied with what was a learning weekend and is looking forward to the remainder of the season. “The car has good aerodynamics and a lot of potential,” he said. “Silverstone is more of a power circuit with three fairly long straights but tracks like Adria and Oschersleben should really suit us.”
After his impressive charges through the field in both races, Quaife still believes he has more pace to find in the car. “You have to remember that we’ve only had the car for 48 hours, it hadn’t done a single lap before this weekend, so we have to take the positives from our performance. There are things we can improve, for example I qualified 13th, put was fifth or sixth after my first flying lap and possibly should have pushed harder on my second.
“We’ll be testing this week at Silverstone to learn more about the car and I’m sure we’ll find a lot of improvements before the next round. I’m still confident that we can regularly qualify in the top six.”
