Indian contingent Aditya Patel along with his Malaysian partner Mitch Gilbert took the lead in the first ever round of the Blancpain GT Series Asia at the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. Team OD Racing drivers bagged the pole in Race 1 of the series held on 8th April, while Race 2 of Round 1 saw the duo take the podium, finishing second.
Patel and Gilbert showed impressive pace right from the qualifiers in their race Audi R8 LMS and started Race 1 at the pole. The first Race saw Gilbert off to a quick start creating enough gap between himself and rest of the drivers. However, an incident on the track necessitated for the safety car for longer than expected and hurt the team's advantage. Nevertheless, Gilbert managed to create a 10 second lead before the mandatory pit stop, handing over the advantage to Patel. The Indian driver only increased the gap further consistently lap-after-lap taking the total lead to 20 seconds at the end of the race. The duo were crowned as the first ever winners of the Blancpain GT Series Asia championship.
The Indo-German drivers started Race 1 at the pole
Race 2 saw the OD Racing duo start in 8th place overall and 2nd in the Silver Class. The race started with Patel behind the wheel, but he was losing too much time fighting for a position against Mercedes and Ferrari. However, the Indian driver took the first opportunity he got within the pit window to hand over the car to Gilbert. The Malaysian driver was in attack mode for the remainder of the race, clocking quick laps along with some impressive overtakes. Moving up the order, Gilbert finished the race in second place.
Speaking about the race and their first victory of the season, Aditya Patel said, "Incredible! It's definitely going to take a few days for the feeling to sink in. We had our strategy in place and knew we'd be able to fight for a top five finish in race 2. My pace was a little compromised having being stuck in a group of cars and we decided to make an early pitstop to hand the car over to Mitch. Once again, he did a magnificent job to fight his way up to 2nd!"
Patel and Gilbert started Race 2 in 8th place, moving up to 2nd
Overall, the Indo-Malaysian drivers lead on the points table of the championship. The next round of the Blancpain GT Series Asia will be held at the Buriram circuit in Thailand on 21-22nd May 2017.
