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GP2 Series

Zuber starts off the 2008 season in earnest with a podium at Barcelona

29 aprile 2008

The first weekend of the new GP2 Series season went well for Andreas Zuber, the Austrian driver who races under a UAE license for Piquet Sports for a third year in GP2 main series. "Everything is new for me this season: the team, my teammate Pastor Maldonado and the car. But so far, everything has worked well. I was fastest in the first practice session and ended up third in qualifying which, although it's not pole, is a good place to start from." Andreas Zuber was second on the time sheets for much of the qualifying session while his teammate was fastest, but at the very last moment Alvaro Parente went second fastest and nudged Andreas down to third.

"In qualifying I was right on the pace when I started the session," added Andreas. "But I was a bit unlucky with the traffic today. I hope it will work well tomorrow for the race and sometimes it is best to be third than second for a good race after a good start. I was thinking that all we needed on Saturday was a good start for the long 38 lap race. For a fraction of second, I felt as if I was going to stall but in the end I had a good start and jumped to second behind Alvaro Parente with Bruno Senna behind us while my team-mate stalled from pole position. I locked my wheels under braking for the first corner and then was plague by that for the rest of the race."

"The safety car was deployed as Ho-Ping Tung stopped at turn one blocking the way and later, a number of other drivers like Mike Conway also stopped for various reasons. I was able to take advantage and go back to the pits to complete the compulsory pit stop and rejoin behind Parente and Bruno Senna as the pace car was still on the track and the race had 34 laps to go. But with more collisions in the pack, the pace car stayed on till lap 31."

"At the restart, the leaders in front of me started fighting for the lead. I could only follow them really close trying to find a way past, while making sure I was also defending my position. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way past and had to settle for third, which is still a good start to the season."

"The second race was not a point maker. My teammate, Maldonado, did not let me through when I tried to pass him the first time, although I was stuck behind him, and he was really much slower than me. Then I passed him and we touched side by side. My car was not very damaged so I continued. After the second safety car period, my teammate drove into my side. This time, I had to slow down because my car was really damaged. I tried to maintain the pace but from sixth position, but I had to drop out of the race in the very last laps and neither of us in the team finished the race. Nevertheless six points for the driver's championship for the season's start is a good tally and the team scored eight points over the weekend, which is promising for the rest of the year."



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