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Spa Race 1: P4 & P5

08/28/2016

Spa Race 1: P4 & P5

Fourth place from Raffaele Marciello and a fantastic recovery drive from 12th place on the grid to fifth from Artem Markelov produced a strong double point-scoring result for Russian Time in the Spa feature race.

The team elected to split strategy, running Lello on an option/prime strategy and Artem on prime/option which the young Russian made work thanks to a fine attacking 18-lap stint on the harder tyre. During the course of the race, Markelov pulled off on-circuit passes of Latifi, Rowland, Pic, Matsushita, Sirotkin, Malja, Ghiotto and Giovinazzi.

The race was won by series leading Frenchman Pierre Gasly, ahead of British drivers Jordan KIng and Alex Lynn.

Raffaele Marciello: I made a good start and picked up places on the opening lap and then, I think, maximised what was possible today. It means that in the championship table, I have closed to within just a single point of second place. I'm aiming to keep up the consistent scoring in tomorrow's sprint race.

Artem Markelov: Although qualifying was disappointing, I promised that I would be a factor in the race and I kept my promise! I think the strategy was good, but to make it work I had to get through the traffic on the prime tyre and I really enjoyed doing that. I couldn't quite match my podium from last year but I finished only just behind Lello.

Svetlana Strelnikova (Team principal): That was another strong race from Lello even if we didn't quite have the pace to challenge for the podium. With Artem, what can you say?! Again he was the most exciting driver to watch and a good indication of the quality of his drive was that he was able to pass both ART cars on the same tyre and open out almost a 10s gap before his pit stop. Congratulations on another great drive.




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