Coming into the final round of the 2015 GT Asia Series, the FFF Racing Team by ACM McLaren crew were high on expectation given the pace of the team last time out in China, and the past experience that Andrea Caldarelli had enjoyed at the new Thailand circuit.
Very few GT Asia Series teams have previously experienced the 4.554-kilometre, 12-turn Buriuram United International Circuit, however Caldarelli – as part of his commitment to the Japanese SuperGT series – had competed at the all new venue in June, finishing in sixth place in the competitive GT500 category.
Whilst a number of their rivals had been at the circuit testing prior to the series first ever visit to Thailand, the FFF team were ready and showed just how great a threat they would be, putting both cars inside the top three at the close of the two unofficial practice sessions ahead of the season final.
“I’m pretty happy with that result, given we spent much of both sessions running on old tyres,” Caldarelli admitted. “You can never tell much from unofficial practice because you don’t know what the other teams are doing, but it was a valuable session.
“I like the circuit, it’s fairly straight forward, although it features a couple of corners which are a bit of a challenge for the amateur drivers, but I think practice showed just how close things are going to be, with just a second separating the top ten teams.”
For Thailand, the FFF team are down to just two cars, with the team unable to repair the #15 car damaged after heavy contact with the barriers in Shanghai.
“Sadly we couldn’t effect repairs in time, so we were forced to withdraw it,” FFF Racing Team by ACM Team Manager Alf Boarer admitted.
“We were also without Tonio [Liuzzi] this weekend due to his Formula E commitments in Beijing, so we’ve gone back the combination of Hiroshi [Hamaguchi] and Alvaro Parente for the weekend.”
“I quite like the circuit,” Hamaguchi admitted. “It has a nice flow to it, the facilities are excellent and Thailand is such a lovely place to be.
“I also enjoyed my experience with Alvaro at Shanghai, and we showed we had plenty of pace, we just want to be able to follow through on qualifying this time, because that small failure that we couldn’t fix in time after practice in China cost us a chance to start forward in the field, yet despite that we finished just off the podium. Imagine what we might have been able to achieve if we started near the front!”
Friday will see the first official sessions for the final round of the season, with two one-hour practice sessions scheduled ahead of a third 30-minute session for Sean Fu [Songyang] and Hamaguchi, before qualifying on Saturday morning.
Conditions have been quite warm at Buriram, with temperatures in the low-mid 30s, something which is expected to continue across the weekend.