Pasin Lathouras has successfully come through the Macau Grand Prix weekend after he turned in a strong and consistently quick performance in this morning’s 12 lap Macau GT Cup.

The 20-year-old Thai driver was on the Macau GT Cup grid for the first time and, behind the wheel of the #33 AF Corse Ferrari 458 GT3, he made up places at the start, settled down, improved his lap times and kept in the hunt all the way to the checkered flag in a race that was, somewhat unusually, free of any incidents.

Crossing the finishline in P17 the young amateur driver was locked onto a train of experienced professional drivers covered by just a few seconds. That really said it all about where he has gone this week. It was an excellent result for his first Macau GT Cup and his laptimes came down all race. In fact, as he fights to learn the unique 6.12-km street circuit, his times have improved with every session, he has shown excellent consistent pace and come the race it was the same story.

Pasin’s appearance at the Macau Grand Prix weekend wraps up his most ambitious season date, which has also been his first full year outside of his native Asia. This year he has contested the full British GT Championship, as well as a couple of races in International GT Open and the 10 Hour Petit Le Mans. It’s been a tough but very rewarding season that has seen Pasin making a big step forward with his career and all year he has been right up against top professionals.

Now Pasin, who is supported by NaRaYa, NARA and Tourism Authority of Thailand, is already looking forward to the 2015 season and he will target making another step towards the top. He will announce his plans very soon.

Free Practice

Pasin kicked off his week in Macau last Thursday (13 Nov) as the single Free Practice session, coming ahead of the two qualifying sessions for the Macau GT Cup competitors, took place over the midday period; it was of 30 minutes duration and eventually ran around half an hour late as red flags delayed the Formula 3 session, which preceded the GT3 cars hitting the track.

The 2014 Macau GT Cup has certainly been one of the most hyped sportscar races of the season and when the lights went green and the cars raced out of the cramped paddock and onto the track for the first time, there was a bumper entry of 35 cars in action, a world class field that included a swathe of factory cars and drivers, led out by full on challenges for victory from defending champions Audi and its big German rivals Mercedes-Benz.

For Pasin the target for FP was very simple, firstly to steer clear of trouble, while learning and building up confidence on what is one of the world’s most challenging and unforgiving tracks, all the while working on car setup ahead of qualifying.

The session was in practicality split into two as a car hit the barriers around the halfway point and had to be removed, which caused the red flags to be waved and the racecars to return to the pitlane. It meant the session essentially comprised of a quarter of an hour on either side of the red flag period and that gave Pasin and the rest of the drivers around 8 laps of green flag running time in total.

Traffic is the biggest problem here and the Thai driver spent the whole session locked in amongst the traffic, which meant he didn’t get a single clear lap, and so his best time of 2:32.432 wasn’t very representative at all. But it represented a solid start and without any scrapes on the car that was a great way to the week going.

Following FP Pasin and the AF Corse team had plenty of setup work to undertake overnight as the car was prepared for Friday’s Qualifying 1 (Q1) session.

Pasin: “I didn’t get as many laps as I wanted due to other cars having incidents in the session, but I’m slowly building the confidence back up. For sure I have some work to do but I don’t have enough time to setup properly as next up is the first qualifying session. There was a lot of traffic and so I couldn’t get any clean laps down, but now I’m looking forward to spending some more time on the track in qualifying.”
 
Qualifying 1

Friday’s first of the two official qualifying sessions saw Pasin make a big stride forward, although once again he was unable to find more than the odd clear lap in the busy traffic out on the track. However, significantly, his pace was 6 seconds quicker than the day before.

The session saw yellow flags in individual sectors, which interrupted the flow of the 30-minute session, but Pasin worked hard in the available time to continue to learn the features of this historic 6.12 km long street circuit which has a configuration that remains almost unchanged since the first race took place here 61 years ago.

He completed 8 laps in Q1 and his best time was a 2:26.541, a big improvement on the practice session the day before. That left Pasin well placed in the mix, holding onto provisional P18, an impressive achievement considering the world-class entry list and crucially the many professional, as well as local, ‘specialist’ drivers that know this track intimately and have raced here for many years.

However it could have actually been a lot better as during his final flying lap in the dying seconds of the session Pasin comfortably posted his personal sector bests in Sector 1 and Sector 2 and was well up on his fastest time so far through Sector 3 before he was baulked by another car during the final few turns.

Pasin: “I’m happy with my qualifying time as I improved a lot from yesterday’s practice. As always, the struggle to find a clear lap to set the time is hard. I managed to get a couple free laps and began to improve my time. I believed I had my best lap on the last lap, but I caught up to traffic so that blew my chance to improve, but overall I’m happy with my performance.”

Qualifying 2

The second and final qualifying session took place against a backdrop of steadily rising temperatures as the Macau weekend weather started to warm up. On track though the action had never stopped sizzling as the big reputations of both the latest factory run or supported racecars and the many top professional drivers here have really been right on the line this week.

For Pasin his first Macau Q2 session was all about getting further to grips with the track and improving his lap times when compared to the day before. And on these targets he really delivered as his best lap, set in 2:25.310, was a full 1.2 seconds faster than he had managed during the previous day’s Q1 session but, yet again, the Thai driver struggled to find track space during a session that was interrupted by red flags. Pasin was also quite lucky to avoid being involved in contact after he was caught up in a big bottleneck at the Melco Hairpin, which caused the first set of red flags to be waved.

That best laptime positioned Pasin very well for the race. With the times for Q1 and Q2 being combined to form the grid, Pasin would thus start this morning’s 12 lap Macau GT Cup from the tenth row of the grid and he would have some star names for company as directly in front of him would be the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 of Dutch professional Carlo Van Dam and the Ferrari 458 GT3 of top Macanese driver André Couto, a former Macau Grand Prix winner and a constant competitor here for the last two decades.

Pasin: “As usual, traffic was the main problem but in addition, we had two red flag periods. It was a very close call in the first red flag session when there was a traffic jam at Melco Hairpin but after that, I just struggled to get a clear lap without a car interrupting the flow at some point as everyone is trying to find an open space for their own lap times. These are normal struggles in Macau though.”
 
Race

In the glow of the early morning sunlight Pasin lined up the #33 car on the bumper 31-car grid (reduced in number from the original entry as some drivers had failed to meet the qualification cutoff time). The Macau GT Cup had an early start time of 0930 as has become the tradition here.

The whole field made a very clean getaway at the rolling start and Pasin had one of the better starts in the pack, making up a few places as he passed Xu Liu (Ferrari), who had been on the inside of him on the grid, as well as Danny Watts (McLaren), thanks to the Thai making a neat run onto the inside line through Turn 1.

The race quickly settled down and it was something of a surprise that there weren’t any incidents over the 12 laps, particularly as the Macau GT Cup has developed quite a reputation for lots of contact as the massed ranks of GT3 cars battle it out for space on this narrow circuit. That left the 20-year-old to hold station in P17 and harry the Mercedes-Benz AMG SLS GT3 of Carlo Van Dam in front. Although Pasin was able to close right in, the Dutch driver covered his position.

Without incidents the race ran for 29 minutes but most significantly for Pasin he was able to reduce his laptimes steadily as he grew in confidence. The youngster pointed out afterwards that, particularly through the technically tricky Sector 2 with its constantly changing gradients, he was now getting more and more comfortable with the track. That’s especially difficult to achieve here as track time is very limited and more often than not it’s interrupted by red flags; in fact he had just three sessions ahead of the race to learn his way around.

Pasin’s best race lap of 2:23.994 was also highly impressive; it was his quickest time all week and put him the young amateur driver right in the time bracket of the many professional drivers in action here. In fact he crossed the line locked in a train of four drivers covered by less than five seconds and made up of Japanese pro stars Takeshi Tsuchiya (Mercedes) and Keita Sawa (Lamborghini) as well as the Dutch professional, Carlo Van Dam. Pasin didn’t have to keep looking in his mirrors though as the next driver was almost half a minute down the road by the time the checkered flag was waved.

Pasin: “I had a good getaway, covering the inside line after the first turn, braking slightly early to avoid any incidents and I made up a couple of places. The race settled down then and I focused of getting a good pace together, keeping up to the car in front and being ready to take advantage of any mistakes. With uninterrupted running for the first time this week I was able to learn the track much more and build up my confidence in the demanding mountain section. I’m happy with my laptimes and happy to finish my first Macau GT Cup so I also want to thank the team who have given me great support all year and set the car up well for this race.”