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Quaife-Hobbs impresses in testing

Adrian Quaife-Hobbs repeated his Monday performance to head the penultimate Formula Renault 3.5 test session at Motorland Aragon

The Comtec driver's effort of 1m42.557s is the fastest recorded over the three days. The time is unlikely to be equalled, as in the afternoon teams will run 'prize' drivers invited by Renault Sport Technologies.

Quaife-Hobbs' performance earned a glowing review from Comtec engineer Paul Heath: "We ran Adrian for a day last year, and he is so much more confident now. He is very determined and very positive. Okay, with so many rookies running it is the not strongest field, I think I would be about P6 if I was driving, but there are still people like [Daniel] Zampieri and [Jean-Eric] Vergne out there.

"Adrian was fantastic in testing at Barcelona last week. He ran wet tyres that Greg [Mansell] had used in the [preceding] race and went P1. He has been competitive in every session, I'm very impressed."

Quaife-Hobbs had not intended to drive this morning, but was keen to recover some track time after a broken spring and gearbox selector severely limited his running on Tuesday afternoon.

"We weren't supposed to go out today," said the Briton, "but because of the gearbox problem yesterday we still had many sets of new tyres left.

"Over four days of testing at Barcelona and here I have been fastest in half the sessions, and have hardly been out of the top three. [Brendon] Hartley, [Alexander] Rossi and myself have been at the top most of the time. They aren't here now, but I don't think the track is any quicker. We also set the time with low-downforce.

"We decided to do these tests as testing is so restricted in most categories. I have a GP2 test with Coloni coming up, but obviously given how well this has gone Formula Renault 3.5 is pretty high up for next year."

GP3 racer Mirko Bortolotti ended the morning as runner-up for BVM Target, with a time of 1m42.786s. The Italian's team-mate Daniel Zampieri finished fourth, behind KMP Racing's Anton Nebylitskiy.

Marco Barba returned to Formula Renault 3.5 with his former team Draco to take fifth spot. The Spaniard was crowned European Open Formula 3 champion at Jerez last weekend.

Nelson Panciatici completed the top six for KMP Racing. The Frenchman has competed with Junior Lotus in 2010.

Pos  Driver               Team             Time       Gap
 1.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  Comtec           1m42.557s
 2.  Mirko Bortolotti     BVM Target       1m42.786s  + 0.229s
 3.  Anton Nebylitskiy    KMP              1m42.937s  + 0.380s
 4.  Daniel Zampieri      BVM Target       1m43.338s  + 0.781s
 5.  Marco Barba          Draco            1m43.355s  + 0.798s
 6.  Nelson Panciatici    KMP              1m43.382s  + 0.825s
 7.  Cesar Ramos          P1               1m43.391s  + 0.834s
 8.  Walter Grubmuller    P1               1m43.449s  + 0.892s
 9.  Valtteri Bottas      Tech 1           1m43.624s  + 1.067s
10.  Filip Salaquarda     ISR              1m43.790s  + 1.233s
11.  Jean Eric Vergne     Carlin           1m43.892s  + 1.335s
12.  Dean Stoneman        Junior Lotus     1m43.933s  + 1.376s
13.  Giovanni Venturini   Epsilon Euskadi  1m44.215s  + 1.658s
14.  Kevin Korjus         Carlin           1m44.269s  + 1.712s
15.  Tom Dillmann         ISR              1m44.336s  + 1.779s
16.  Will Stevens         Epsilon Euskadi  1m44.567s  + 2.010s
17.  Stephane Richelmi    Draco            1m44.617s  + 2.060s
18.  Kimiya Sato          Comtec           1m44.752s  + 2.195s
19.  Luciano Bacheta      Junior Lotus     1m44.827s  + 2.270s
20.  Oliver Webb          Fortec           1m45.279s  + 2.722s
21.  Tom Blomqvist        Fortec           1m45.561s  + 3.004s
22.  Max Snegirev         Fortec           1m45.665s  + 3.108s
23.  Adriano Buzaid       Tech 1           1m47.343s  + 4.786s

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