Just three weeks after he kicked his 2016 racing season off at Monza, Pasin Lathouras will be back in the cockpit this weekend as the Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup moves onto Silverstone Circuit in the UK for its second round of the year.

As was the case at Monza, the 22-year-old Thai will line up for AF Corse, again sharing the new #50 Ferrari 488 GT3 with Italian drivers, Michele Rugolo and Alessandro Pier Guidi.

Last month’s season opener in Italy proved to be something of a mixed weekend for Pasin and his teammates as while the new Ferrari clearly looked to have promising pace to harness every time it took to the track, that speed didn’t translate into a race result and lap 1 damage and then technical issues scuppered the car’s participation before mid distance.

However this year represents another steep learning curve for Pasin, not least because the 488 GT3 is a brand new car with a new engine, a 3.9 twin turbo, and it’s so something of a development year for everybody and to come straight out of the box and qualify in the top-10 of a grid with a bumper 57 GT3 cars was massively positive. Clearly this car-driver package can mix it up at the business end of the action in the leading racing series in the world reserved exclusively for FIA GT3 cars.

So the crew in the #50 car move on quickly from Monza in a very positive frame of mind, despite that DNF, and are now focused on turning their speed into a strong result at Silverstone.

The young Thai driver always says he relishes the challenge of the famous high-speed circuits the most, so it’s on from one ultra-fast amphitheater, in the shape of the Autodromo Nazionale Monza last month, and straight onto another of the world’s greatest tests of the racing driver, the historic 5.891-km, 18-turn Silverstone Circuit. So, boosted by the pace in Italy, he’s clearly relishing being back at Northamptonshire track, which is also the long time home of the British Formula 1 Grand Prix.

For Pasin he has already raced previously at Silverstone. In 2014 he competed here in the British GT Championship while last year it was a similar story, this time in International GT Open where (along with Michele, who also will be in the car this weekend) he scored an impressive podium finish after the duo had fought back in the race from a difficult qualifying session.

This year Pasin is being supported by NaRaYa, LaLaMa, NaRa by NaRaYa, Tourism Authority of Thailand and Sport Authority of Thailand.

The weekend’s track action will kick off this Saturday (14 May) with a 90 minute Free Practice Session (1055-1225), all times are local (GMT), before the day wraps up with the Pre Qualifying Session, which is also of 90 minutes duration (1630-1800). Qualifying will take place on Sunday morning (15 May) and is scheduled for 1-hour (1000-1100) before Round 2 of the 2016 Blancpain GT Series Endurance Cup gets the green lights in the afternoon at 1500. The race is scheduled to last for 3-hours and will finish at 1800.

Pasin Lathouras: “Clearly we didn’t get the result we would have wanted in Monza but there were a lot of positives to take away and we showed we can compete with the best GT3 cars and drivers in the world, it was important that we were in that ballpark. The 488 looks to be a very promising package, it’s good step from the 458 and good to drive and it should have moved further along by Silverstone. I like this track and it should suit us quite well, so now we have to work hard and pick up a solid result.”