Blancpain GT Series Asia: Aditya Patel And Mitchell Gilbert Kick Things Off With A Win

It has been a good first outing for team OD Racing at the inaugural round of the 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia. The #86 Audi R8 LMS GT3 piloted by Indian driver Aditya Patel and Australian Mitchell Gilbert was among the top contenders going into the race weekend. They now lead the GT3 driver's standings and the silver cup category.

In the qualifying session for the first race, Mitchell pulled off a last-minute fast lap to take pole position. The surprise lap snatched pole position from BBT's Anthony Liu Xi driving a Ferrari 488 GT3. The difference in qualifying times was just 0.182 seconds! In the qualifying session for race 2, Aditya was able to qualify for P9 on the grid.

Race 1 was a thriller, with Mitchell taking the lead from pole and managing to extend it to 11 seconds ahead of second place Anthony in the BBT Ferrari 488 GT3. The fight for second place was a spectacle, with five cars (Anthony in the BBT Ferrari 488 GT3, Darryl O'Young and Jules Gounon in the Craft-Bamboo Racing Porsche 911 GT3 RS, Marchy Lee in the Audi Hong Kong R8 LMS GT3 and Sandy Stuvik in theVSR Lamborghini Huracan GT3) fighting it out! After the mandatory pit stop for a driver change, Aditya Patel was easily able to extend the lead to 23 seconds at one point. He led the Audi to a comfortable victory.

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“It was pretty easy in the end after Mitch did the hard work early on! I was just hoping for the car to stay together because when you have such a comfortable lead you hear every noise it makes. I was in touch with my engineer who told me the pace I needed to maintain and it worked out perfectly,” said Aditya Patel after race 1.

The win in race 1 meant OD Racing had to incur a mandatory 10-second 'success penalty'. Aditya began the race at 9th place and could not proceed higher up the grid. The decision to pit early, take the 10-second penalty and put on fresh tyres helped Mitchell tear through the pack to take the second spot on the podium. 

"That was a tough race; I’m still destroyed! Every lap had to be a quali lap in order to make up the 10s, which wasn’t easy. I told the team when I got up to third that we were going after Marchy [Lee]. They were like, ‘you’re good in third’, but there was no way I was backing off. The car was amazing and I reeled him in quite quickly. Before that, I’d seen all the cars coming out of the pits ahead and doubted we’d have much chance of a podium, but the car had so much grip so I was able to just drive around people. Credit to OD Racing for giving us that, and also to Aditya who had to hang in there on my quali tyres in the first stint," said Mitchell Gilbert after finishing race 2.

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With the podium finish in the first race and the second place finish in the second race, team OD leads in the Silver Cup. Both Aditya Patel and Mitchell Gilbert lead the drivers' standings in the GT3 category. The next round of the 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia championship will be held at the Chang Internation Circuit in Thailand on May 20th and 21st.