Sergey Sirotkin made the Russian anthem resound in the Napa Valley, winning the last race of the season in Sonoma ahead of Adrian Quaife-Hobbs and Sergio Campana. Here is what they said after the race. Sergey SirotkinYesterday bad luck stripped you of a very possible win but today you managed to show your real pace on this challenging track.Yeah, what happened yesterday was really unfortunate. We knew we had a quick car and that in a normal race we would have been fighting for a win. Today everything was fine and things went accordingly: I had a good start and made a good pass on Serenelli at Turn 1, and then the team did a great job at the pit-stop allowing me to jump in the lead. From that point I was just quicker than everybody else and even the tyres were outstanding, I had no performance drop at all and could push for the whole race.You fell just short of 2nd place in the championship but you took it in the Under 21 standings, how important is that?The position in the standings is important because its a testament to what you did in the season, but in my case Im not looking at it too much because Im convinced that we could have been much higher than that as we really had a lot of bad luck this season.Anyway, what really counts is the experience that Auto GP gave me this year. I learned a lot on how to drive very high performance single seaters and I feel ready for the next steps of my career.
Adrian Quaife-HobbsA lot of bad luck in the last three races, but you managed to get on the podium in the season finale. Its the best way to close a dominating campaign, isnt it?Well I really wanted to end the season with a podium finish, having me and the team tasting champagne again was great. Actually we could have even won without an issue with Spavone at the pit-stop: he engaged the pit-limiter on the wrong line, and this meant that we were really slow at pit-entry, something that costed us quite a lot of seconds. After that we could just try to chase Sergey, but he was quick and at a point my tyres just started fading. I realized that finishing a podium was too important to waste the chance and I eased my pace.Now you can look back at your season: whats the feeling?Its really great. Winning the championship the way we did it was astonishing: we had tough rivals like Varhaug and Sirotkin who gave us an hard time, but overall we always were the dominating force: 6 poles out of 7 events speak out for themselves, as well as 5 wins, the perfect weekend in Budapest and so on. I would like to say thanks to the team for their effort in giving me the best possible car at each weekend, and Auto GP for providing us such a great championship to race in. Sergio CampanaBefore the race you told us that you really wanted to climb on the podium. You did it, even if odds played against you.I really wanted to finish the season with a great result, I was hungry for it. At the start of the race I was really quick and immediately jumped to second, but then the team had an issue with a rear wheel at the pit-stop and I dropped to fifth. It was disappointing but I knew I wasnt going to give up. You made two good passes on a track where overtaking is not easy, tell us how it was from the cockpit.Ive always been good under braking, I think its one of my strongpoints as a driver, and its a good skill when you need to overtake. With Varhaug in Turn 11 it was easy because I dont think he was really expecting it, he didnt close the door too much. With Spavone it was a bit different, he was boasting some good defensive line but I was putting pressure on him and a little mistake at turn 7 gave me the room I needed. It was good fun!.