Thai motorsport fans will have plenty to cheer this weekend when the news filtered through that Tanart Sathienthirakul had made a late entry into the race; he will be driving the one of the two new Adress LMP3 prototypes that Team AAI has recently acquired. Tanart’s certainly a well-known young Thai driver name, but the fans have had to follow his racing career abroad for the last half a decade – on Sunday though that will all change.
“My last race [in Thailand] was karting five years ago,” he explained after his first session in the Adess this morning. From domestic karting Tanart went straight to Europe to race in F3 and has been a little bit out of sight ever since. “I race in Europe so I kind of live in the UK so I don’t have to fly back and forward every time,” he explains.
So it was a little bit of a surprise when his name was lodged with the race organisers’ by Team AAI yesterday and Tanart reckons that the combination of driving a prototype in Thailand simply wasn’t one to be missed and will be extra useful as he’s currently considering his future career direction. “I would like to experience LMP cars and decide what I’m doing this year, so we will step up from here and see what happens,” he says.
He certainly has a steep learning curve ahead over the next couple of days. “It’s my first time in the car [and] first time in the track,” he says. “A bit tricky at first, but getting used to it in the end.” And he certainly was, the young driver quickly setting very representative laptimes.
When he went off to race in Europe, Chang International Circuit wasn’t even a distant dream in its owners’ eyes. But now used to racing on the most famous tracks in the world, Tanart is very pleased to be here for the first time. “I think the track is a fast track and a flowing track so you have to get in the rhythm and it’s not so bad, but when you’re not in the rhythm it’s a bit tricky,” he says.
He’s also unused to driving a car with an enclosed cockpit or even enclosed wheels and can only draw on a single racing experience previously away from single seaters – and that wasn’t even an LMP car. “I did one GT race two years ago in an Aston [Martin] at [Japanese circuit] Autopolis,” he notes.
A ‘Formula 3’ car and a ‘Le Mans Prototype’ are world’s apart and Tanart explains the a few of the differences that he has to get used to – and all in just a few track sessions. “I think the F3 [car] has a lot more downforce and is more reactive, no power steering and basically it’s stuck more to the track,” he says. “This one’s a bit more tricky with the brakes and it’s a lot heavier than the F3 [car] so you have to get used to the downforce which is a bit lower and then with the braking, I can’t really brake a lot with this car as if I do a peak attack on the brakes it would completely lock up so I have to progressively attack the brakes and build up the braking pressure.”
Interestingly it seems we could be seeing a lot more of this young driver in Asia and of course at Chang International Circuit in the near future and that’s certainly going to be a real bonus for the Thai fans. “I don’t think I will be doing single-seaters [in 2016] I think I will be doing LMP or GT so I will be around here somewhere,” he adds with a laugh.