Mixed Result For Aditya And Mitch At Round 2 Of Blancpain GT Series Asia

Aditya Patel and Mitch Gilbert had high hopes for the second round of the Blancpain GT Series Asia; they had, after all, recorded a historical pole position finish in the first round at Sepang and were leading the championship. The relatively new 4.554km-long Chang International Circuit in Thailand, though, was better-suited for cars with higher top speed - not the R8's forte.

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For Q1, Mitch Gilbert was able to place the #86 Audi R8 LMS GT3 in P3, not able to match the pace of the Ferrari 488 GT3s of Anthony Liu (BBT) and Rino Mastronardi (Spirit of Race). In Q2, the pace of the cars was much closer, with the top 10 cars finishing within .7 seconds of pole sitter Alessio Picariello (J-Fly by Absolute Racing). Aditya Patel could manage a best finish of P11 in Q2.

Race 1 at the Chang International Circuit did not go as well as Team OD Racing would have hoped. The #86 Audi R8 was damaged extensively when the Mercedes-AMG GT3 piloted by Hunter Abbott of GruppeM Racing collided with it on the first lap. After extensive repairs, the car finished outside of the classification time, 21 laps behind pole sitter Rino Mastronardi and Rui Aguas in the Spirit of Race’s Ferrari 488 GT3. Hunter Abbott was awarded a 30-second penalty for avoidable contact with Gilbert's car, due to which he finished P4.

Aditya and Mitch wanted to make up for their misfortunes in the first race. Starting from the 11th spot on the grid, Aditya Patel was able to pass three cars into turn one. He was also lucky enough to come out unscathed from a 5-car pile-up and found himself in the fourth position in the race.

After an unsuccessful scuffle with the Audi R8 of Audi Hong Kong's Shaun Thong Wei Fung, Aditya had to settle for fifth position before handing over the reins of his car to Mitch Gilbert. Mitch was able to fight on till the end with two other racers to achieve a 3rd place finish. 

Aditya Patel reflected on the difficult race weekend, “In all honesty, I know the weekend could’ve been so much better, but at the end of the day we’re all racing and everybody wants to win. Mitch and I worked hard right from practice to be up on pace but unfortunately qualifying and race one didn’t go our way. The podium in race two is definitely what we needed to keep us in the game. We know we can fight harder in Suzuka.”

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With two rounds of the championship over Aditya Patel and Mitch Gilbert find themselves third overall in terms of the team standings (behind GruppeM Racing Team in first and Audi Hong Kong in second) as well as in the driver standings (Hunter Abbott is first, Marchy Lee/Shaun Thong Wei Fung are second).

The third round of the 2017 Blancpain GT Series Asia will be held at the Suzuka International Circuit in Japan from June 24-25.