Pasin Lathouras recorded another strong weekend as Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup pitched up at Silverstone Circuit. Finishing in sixth place overall and grabbing a useful chunk of championship points for the second consecutive race keeps the 24-year-old Thai driver well positioned in the classification as the series now prepares to tackle the two long distance classics on this year’s calendar.
Pasin was as usual sharing the #50 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GT3 with Italian teammates Michele Rugolo and Alessandro Pier Guidi in the PRO class with the trio coming very quickly off the back of the second place finish that was achieved during the season opener, the 3 Hours of Monza, just three weeks ago.
The objective of the weekend in the U.K. would be to score as many championship points as possible and defend their position on the leaderboard. However, while the Ferrari 488 GT3 normally offers good consistency and reliability, the BoP rating is currently unfavourable and the Italian sportscar simply cannot compete on speed with several key rivals including the Lamborghini Huracán GT3 and the Mercedes-AMG GT3 which especially makes passing very difficult.
During last Sunday morning’s combined qualifying session around the 5.891 km/18 turn Silverstone Circuit, which went in the order of Pasin (Q1), Michele (Q2) and Alessandro (Q3), they performed well to line up on the third row of the grid in P6. Come the 3-hour race though, which went to green lights later in the afternoon, the appearance of the Safety Car twice during the first hour compromised their race and wiped out the early gains that Alessandro, who started the car this time, had made.
Pasin in for the middle stint and Michele for the last hour both drove consistently and defensively to keep the car in the middle order of the top ten overall runners, Pasin – a FIA ‘Silver’ level ranked driver – having to fight off many ‘Platinum’ level pros. With more than fifty GT3 cars in the race and the #50 car running in the top level PRO class, their work was really cut out to deliver a good result. Not only all that but historic Silverstone is also one of the world’s demanding tracks, high speed in nature it’s of course the long-time home of the British F1 Grand Prix.
But deliver they really did. Pasin, Michele and Alessandro got the job done to finish in sixth place achieving their target of grabbing as many championship points as was feasible with their BoP limitations. The eight points on offer keeps them very well placed in the classification and they are currently third in the rankings.
Next up on the calendar are two long distance races, the latter offering two additional sets of points that are awarded at part distance. First up is the Paul Ricard 1000 km on 23-24 June before the 24 Hours of Spa on 27-30 July. Pasin has enjoyed success in both races. Last year he finished runner up at Paul Ricard in the PRO class while the year before he won the 24 Hours of Spa in the PRO-AM category. The target now will be collected as many points as possible from these two races before the Blancpain GT season winds down into the closing stages.
Pasin Lathouras: “I had to work very hard during my stint to defend track position and in fact we all worked hard to get to the finish in the points and I’m pleased with the result. Where we are with the car at the moment in terms of speed means that’s as good a result as we could expect and we were also unfortunate to give up track position when the Safety Car came out a couple of times. I’m very happy with our championship position and now it’s on to Paul Ricard where we got a great result last year and I hope this will play into our hands better. The team did a great job all weekend in Silverstone, so did Michele and Alessandro, so thanks to everyone.”
