Hot on the heels of his stunning debut victory in International GT Open, it’s straight back to British GT Championship action for Pasin Lathouras. The seventh and final round of the year will take the series to Donington Park for the first time this season.
It’s really a non-stop September for the Thai youngster as Donington Park will be his third race in as many weekends. The weekend before the GT Open round at Spa-Francorchamps the British GT championship had visited Brands Hatch for its penultimate round of the year.
At Donington Park Pasin will have Richard Lyons alongside him once again and the pair will be hoping to keep their momentum going from Spa last weekend and bag another decent result.
However, while their AF Corse-run Ferrari 458 GT3 shed the extra 75kg of ballast it carries in British GT for the International GT Open race at Spa, thus allowing Pasin and Richard to compete for the first time this season on a level playing field, they will be once again have a weight disadvantage to the other competitors at Donington Park.
So their strategy, as ever this season, will be to fight as hard as possible, be ready to capitalise as the race unfolds and to add more points, aiming to finish well inside the top ten and grab as high a spot as possible. At the last round Pasin came home in fifth place, a similar finish would be a perfect way to end the year.
In fact Pasin currently lies in sixth place in the British GT Championship points standings after 6 of the 7 events and his primary task this weekend will be to defend that position. While he still can – mathematically – move up the table, realistically, with the seventh placed driver just 3.5 points behind, Pasin has to defend his sixth place, which would be an excellent result for his debut year considering the weight disadvantage and also the rotation in teammates he has had this season.
This has been Pasin’s first season racing outside Asia and has been deemed a learning experience. As such it’s been a great success, the British GT championship has provided tough opposition and taken the 20-year-old to tracks he has never raced on before so he’s learnt a lot for the future. And while the extra weight means he’s not usually in a position to challenge for the podium, he’s consistently bagged points. In fact he’s crossed the finishline inside the top-ten in eight of the nine races held so far.
In holding the final round of the year at Donington Park the championship completes a full circle as the East Midlands track hosted the Official Media Day back in early April, kicking off the 2014 season. Then Pasin had the opportunity to get a few laps of the 4.02-km, 12-turn circuit under his belt although as this was the Official Media Day there wasn’t really any chance to seriously get to grips to the historic circuit, which is one of the oldest in the UK.
As ever, for this weekend the British GT Championship will boast a bumper grid during the season closing 2-hour race, with more than 30 cars expected to participate. All the leading FIA GT3 racecar brands – including Ferrari, Aston Martin, BMW, McLaren, Bentley, Audi, Porsche, Ginetta and Nissan – will be represented.
The British GT action on track at Donington Park kicks off tomorrow morning (Saturday, 13 September) with an opening hour of free practice (0950-1050). That will be followed by a second hour of practice at lunchtime (1220-1320) before the usual two 15-minute long qualifying sessions to decide the grid take place at 1550-1605 and 1610-1625 respectively. Raceday (Sunday, 14 September) gets underway with the warm up session (0910-0920) before the final race of the 2014 British GT Championship is set to go to green lights at 1255. It’s 2-hours long and the checkered flag is scheduled to be waved at 1455.
Pasin Lathouras: “I’m looking forward to Donington Park this weekend and I hope we can end the British GT season on a strong note with another decent result. I’ve had a great year in this series, which is very competitive with top drivers, big grids and important tracks so I think it’s been great for my first year racing in Europe. The only minus has been the weight we have to carry and that was really shown last weekend when we were in GT Open with the same car but without the ballast and we were competitive from the start. But that’s part of it in British GT so we accept it and really we have had to just knuckle down and fight extra hard. AF Corse has been a fantastic team and I have learnt a lot them and also from my teammate Richard all season so I hope we can all dig in and end the season with another good result.”